[support] how to handle internal links

[Ray Zimmerman]

On Jul 5, 2006, at 6:27 AM, Bèr Kessels wrote:
> I advice you to not use "hardcoded" links at all. Look at some  
> filters like
> title-filter, interwiki or so. The links package (links module) has  
> other
> nice links handling tools for you.
>
> That way you only store references to links (reference to the data)  
> and not
> the links themselves (embedded data).

Thanks for the pointers. I agree with you in general, especially in  
the case of external links. But, I would argue (though not very  
strongly) that for internal data, node/99 *is* a reference to the  
data that I want to be translated into a link (which depends on my  
server's $base_url, path aliasing, etc). In fact, these internal  
references (paths) are used all over drupal, esp. in the menu system.  
However, I can't find any solutions for using these internal  
references in content that appear to be supported.

title.module (http://drupal.org/project/title) - appears to be abandoned
interwiki (http://drupal.org/project/interwiki) - good for links to  
specific external resources, but not internal links
links package (http://drupal.org/node/24719) - does not appear to  
handle internal links, like node/99
Base Path Filter (http://drupal.org/node/58777) - does not appear to  
be in contrib cvs (plus I prefer an explicit filter syntax for  
internal links)

> IMO it is a bad practice to hardcode "stuff" like links, images,  
> quotes, etc
> inside a node. These are 'metadata' things. Hence should live in a  
> separate
> place.
>
> More pragmatic: If you have references to the data, that gets  
> turned into real
> links (like [link:134]) and you choose to change your internal url  
> scheme
> (pathauto) or you move your server (I recently moved from  
> www.foobar/ to
> foobar/ and had to preg-replace thousands of entries) your code  
> will take
> care of that change.

My point exactly. Is there an existing module that actually does  
this? Ideally, I think the links package should handle this, but if  
it does I missed it. Did the old weblink module support internal  
links? Maybe I'll file a feature request with the links package.

Still looking for the right solution ...

	Ray