February 2005 - Development - lists.drupal.org

[drupal-devel] [feature] RSS Feeds behind Firewall
by jhefmv24 04 Feb '05

04 Feb '05

Project: Drupal Version: 4.4.2 Component: base system Category: feature requests Priority: normal Assigned to: Anonymous Reported by: jhefmv24 Updated by: jhefmv24 Status: patch Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/system.module_2.patch (956 bytes) +1 on having a facility to modify proxy settings... here's a patch of /modules/system.module for drupal-4.4.2 version jhefmv24 Previous comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 19, 2004 - 13:01 : jhefmv24 Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/common.inc (37.11 KB) I think the RSS feeds don't work if there is proxy server running. The request/connection is somehow being blocked. The connection should be made first to the proxy and once it is established, then request can made. I think the core function drupal_http_request() under /includes/common.inc doesn't support this. One workaround is change the code from: <?php switch ($uri['scheme']) { case 'http': //$fp = @fsockopen($uri['host'], ($uri['port'] ? $uri['port'] : 80), $errno, $errstr, 15); ?> into: <?php //use proxy settings $fp = @fsockopen('proxy2', '8080'); ?> And then create the request by change from: <?php $request = "$method $path HTTP/1.0\r\n"; ?> Into: <?php $request = "$method ".$uri['scheme']."://".$uri['host'].$path." HTTP/1.1\r\n"; ?> And comment out the lines: <?php $request .= implode("\r\n", $defaults); ?> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 2, 2005 - 07:38 : Anonymous Did this ever get taken care of in 4.5.2. I can't seem to get any feed to work from behind a firewall. Getting error.... Failed to parse RSS feed Microsoft Security Info: 10060 A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond.. At home this same feed works fine, so I know it's not the feed. Thanks, SlackNet ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 4, 2005 - 12:24 : jhefmv24 Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/common.inc_4.patch (1.37 KB) +1 on having a facility to modify proxy settings... here's a patch of /includes/common.inc for drupal-4.4.2 version -- View: http://drupal.org/node/7881 Edit: http://drupal.org/project/comments/add/7881

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[drupal-devel] [feature] RSS Feeds behind Firewall
by jhefmv24 04 Feb '05

04 Feb '05

Project: Drupal -Version: 4.5.2 +Version: 4.4.2 Component: base system -Category: bug reports +Category: feature requests Priority: normal Assigned to: Anonymous Reported by: jhefmv24 Updated by: jhefmv24 -Status: active +Status: patch Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/common.inc_4.patch (1.37 KB) +1 on having a facility to modify proxy settings... here's a patch of /includes/common.inc for drupal-4.4.2 version jhefmv24 Previous comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 19, 2004 - 13:01 : jhefmv24 Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/common.inc (37.11 KB) I think the RSS feeds don't work if there is proxy server running. The request/connection is somehow being blocked. The connection should be made first to the proxy and once it is established, then request can made. I think the core function drupal_http_request() under /includes/common.inc doesn't support this. One workaround is change the code from: <?php switch ($uri['scheme']) { case 'http': //$fp = @fsockopen($uri['host'], ($uri['port'] ? $uri['port'] : 80), $errno, $errstr, 15); ?> into: <?php //use proxy settings $fp = @fsockopen('proxy2', '8080'); ?> And then create the request by change from: <?php $request = "$method $path HTTP/1.0\r\n"; ?> Into: <?php $request = "$method ".$uri['scheme']."://".$uri['host'].$path." HTTP/1.1\r\n"; ?> And comment out the lines: <?php $request .= implode("\r\n", $defaults); ?> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 2, 2005 - 07:38 : Anonymous Did this ever get taken care of in 4.5.2. I can't seem to get any feed to work from behind a firewall. Getting error.... Failed to parse RSS feed Microsoft Security Info: 10060 A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond.. At home this same feed works fine, so I know it's not the feed. Thanks, SlackNet -- View: http://drupal.org/node/7881 Edit: http://drupal.org/project/comments/add/7881

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[drupal-devel] [feature] http proxy support patch
by jhefmv24 04 Feb '05

04 Feb '05

Project: Drupal -Version: cvs +Version: 4.4.2 Component: base system Category: feature requests Priority: minor Assigned to: Anonymous Reported by: liquidx Updated by: jhefmv24 Status: patch Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/common.inc_3.patch (1.37 KB) +1 on having a facility to modify proxy settings... here's a patch of /includes/common.inc for drupal-4.4.2 version jhefmv24 Previous comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ August 3, 2004 - 11:39 : liquidx Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/drupal-cvs-20040802-proxy.diff (1.96 KB) My drupal site is behind a firewall which doesn't allow outgoing port 80 connections except if they go through an http proxy. normally that doesn't really harm anything, except when i start using XML-RPC or try to get RSS/Atom feed from other blogs. So I've written a quick patch to add http_proxy support in conf.php. I'm not sure whether that is the best place to put it, but if you think people might want a UI to change that, I could do that. But I suspect that proxy settings don't change much (its not like you migrate a drupal web site to different isps everyday :), so conf.php seems like a good choice. Cheers, Alastair Tse ------------------------------------------------------------------------ August 3, 2004 - 11:42 : liquidx Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/drupal-cvs-20040802-proxy-v2.diff (1.96 KB) slight typo in the comment, i never get things right the first time round :( ------------------------------------------------------------------------ August 3, 2004 - 12:13 : Anonymous HOW TO MAKE 1000'S FROM 6$! READ PLEASE! How to afford anything you want, no joke! Read, it cant hurt! READING THIS COULD CHANGE YOUR LIFE! AND RICH! I found this on a bulletin board and decided to try it. 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By the end of the second week I had made a total of over $1,000.00! In the third week I had over $10,000.00 and it's still growing. This is now my fourth week and I have made a total of just over $42,000.00 and it's still coming in rapidly. It's certainly worth $6.00, and 6 stamps, I have spent more than that on the lottery!! Let me tell you how this works and most importantly, why it works... Also, make sure you print a copy of this article NOW, so you can get the information off of it as you need it. I promise you that if you follow the directions exactly, that you will start making more money that you thought possible by doing something so easy! Suggestion: Read this entire message carefully! (print it out or download it.) Follow the simple directions and watch the money come in! It's easy. It's legal. And, your investment is only $6.00 (plus postage). IMPORTANT: This is not a rip-off; it is not indecent; it is not illegal; and it is virtually no risk - it really works!!! IMPORTANT2: The $1.00 for each person on the list is for keeping you up to date and for putting you in all our newsgroups. So you will make just as much as we do!!! If all of the following instructions are adhered to, you will receive extraordinary dividends. PLEASE NOTE: Please follow these directions EXACTLY, and $50,000 or more can be yours in 20 to 60 days. This program remains successful because of the honesty and integrity of the participants. Please continue its success by carefully adhering to the instructions. You will now become part of the Mail Order business. In this business your product is not solid and tangible, it's a service. You are in the business of developing Mailing Lists. Many large corporations are happy to pay big bucks for quality lists. However, the money made from the mailing lists is secondary to the income which is made from people like you and me asking to be included in that list. Here are the 4 easy steps to success: STEP 1: Get 6 separate pieces of paper and write the following on each piece of paper "PLEASE PUT ME ON YOUR MAILING LIST." Now get 6 US $1.00 bills and place ONE inside EACH of the 6 pieces of paper so the bill will not be seen through the envelope (to prevent thievery). Next, place one paper in each of the 6 envelopes and seal them. You should now have 6 sealed envelopes, each with a piece of paper stating the above phrase, your name and address, and a $1.00 bill. What you are doing is creating a service. This is absolutely legal? You are requesting a legitimate service and you are paying for it! Like most of us I was a little skeptical and a little worried about the legal aspects of it all. So I checked it out with the U.S. Post Office (1-800-725-2161) and they confirmed that it is indeed legal! Mail the 6 envelopes to the following addresses: 1.) GLEN RAY CAMPBELL Jr. 919 Virginia Ct. Panama City,Fl 32404,usa 2.)Heather Angel 4244 46th St. San Diego, Ca. 92115 3.) Alexander Dolstra Frederik Hendrik straat 37 3143 LB Maassluis the Netherlands 4.) J. Kirk 2360 Forbes Ave. Santa Clara, CA 95050 5.) N. Hernandez PO Box 712 Crystal Beach, Fl. 34681, usa 6.)D.Herela 849 La Fayette apt.6-D El Paso, TX. 79907, usa STEP 2: Now take the #1 name off the list that you see above, move the other names up (6 becomes 5, 5 becomes 4, etc. ...) and add YOUR name as number 6 on the list. STEP 3: Change anything you need to, but try to keep this article as close to the original as possible. Now, post your amended article to at least 200 newsgroups. (I think there are close to 24,000 groups.) All you need is 200, but remember, the more you post, the more money you make! This is perfectly legal! If you have any doubts, refer to Title 18 Sec. 1302 & 1241 of the Postal lottery laws. Keep a copy of these steps for yourself and, whenever you need money, you can use it again, and again. PLEASE REMEMBER that this program remains successful because of the honesty and integrity of the participants and by their carefully adhering to the directions. Look at it this way, if you are of integrity, the program will continue and the money that so many others have received will come your way, too. NOTE: You may want to retain every name and address sent to you, either on a computer or hard copy and keep the notes people send you. This VERIFIES that you are truly providing a service. (Also, it might be a good idea to wrap the $1 bill in dark paper to reduce the risk of mail theft.) So, as each post is downloaded and the directions carefully followed, six members will be reimbursed for their participation as a List Developer with one dollar each. Your name will move up the list geometrically so that when your name reached the #1 position you will be receiving thousands of dollars in CASH!!! What an opportunity for only $6.00 ($1.00 for each of the first six people listed above). Send it now, add your own name to the list and you're in business! ---DIRECTIONS----FOR HOW TO POST TO NEWSGROUPS------------------ STEP 1: You do not need to re-type letter to your own posting. Simply put your cursor at the beginning of this letter and drag your cursor to the bottom of this document, and select 'copy' from the edit menu. This will copy the entire letter into the computer's memory. STEP 2: Open a blank 'notepad' file and place your cursor at the top of the blank page. From the 'edit' menu select 'PASTE'. This will paste a copy of the letter into notepad so that you can add your name to the bottom of the list and to change the numbers of the list. STEP 3: Save your new notepad file as a '.txt' file. If you want to do your postings in different settings, you'll always have this file to go back to. STEP 4: Use Netscape or Internet Explorer and try search for various newsgroups (on-line forums, message boards, chat sites, discussions). STEP 5: Visit these message boards and post this article as a new message by highlighting the text of this letter and selecting 'PASTE' from the edit menu. Fill in the Subject, this will be the header that everyone sees as they scroll through the list of postings in a particular group, click the post message button. You're done with your first one! Congratulations... That is it! All you have to do is jump to different newsgroups and post away, after you get the hang of it, it will take about 30 seconds for each newsgroup! ** REMEMBER, THE MORE NEWSGROUPS YOU POST IN, THE MORE MONEY YOU WILL MAKE!! BUT YOU HAVE TO POST A MINIMUM OF 200** That is it! You will begin receiving money form around the world within days! You may eventually want to rent a P.O. Box due to the large amount of mail you will receive. If you wish to stay anonymous, you can invent a name to use, as long as the postman will deliver it. **JUST MAKE SURE ALL THE ADDRESSES ARE CORRECT.** Now the WHY part: Out of 200 postings, say I receive only 5 replies (a very low example). So then I made $5.00 with my name at #6 on the letter. Now, each of the 5 persons who just sent me $1.00 make the MINIMUM 200 postings, each with my name at #5 and only 5 persons respond to each of the original 5, this is an additional $25.00 for me. Now those 25 each make 200 MININUM posts with my name at #4 and only 5 replies each. This brings in an additional $125.00. Now, those 125 persons turn around and post the MINIMUM 200 with my name at #3 and receive 5 replies each, I will make an additional $625.00. Ok, now here is the fun part, each of those 625 people post a MINIMUM 200 letters with my name at #2 and they receive 5 replies each. That just made me $3,125.00!!! Those 3,125 persons will all deliver this message to 200 newsgroups with my name at #1 and if still 5 persons per 200 react, I will receive an additional $15,625.00!! With an investment of only $6.00! AMAZING! When your name is no longer on the list, you just take the latest posting in the newsgroups, and send out another $6.00 to names on the list, putting your name at number 6 again. And start posting again. The thing to remeber is: do you realize that thousands of people all over the world are joining the internet and reading these articles everyday? JUST LIKE YOU are now!! So, can you afford $6.00 and see if it really works?? I think so... People have said, "what if the plan is played out and no one sends you the money? So what! What are the chances of that Happening when there are tons of new honest users and new honest people who are joining the internet and newsgroups everyday and are willing to give it a try? Anyway, it is only $6.00 for a chance at thousands. Estimates are at 20,000 to 50,000 new users, every day, with thousands of those joining the actual internet. Remember, play FAIRLY and HONESTLY and this will really work. You wouldn't want someone to cheat you the same way you may be cheating! HOW TO MAKE 1000'S FROM 6$! READ PLEASE! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ August 4, 2004 - 16:54 : TDobes This seems like a possibly useful patch for those stuck in an environment where they must use a proxy. (intranets?) I have no proxy set up at the moment with which to test, but +1 to the functionality. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 3, 2004 - 19:47 : Steven If we use HTTP/1.1 (using the Host header), I think we can send exactly the same request to both a proxy and the real server. It might make the code a bit cleaner. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 26, 2005 - 12:01 : Steve Stock That's correct, HTTP/1.1 explicitly requires servers to accept an absolute URI in the request-line (which of course proxies already require). See http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec5.html#sec5.1.2 for details. Note: a host header is still required. The drawback is all HTTP/1.1 applications must be able to accept the chunked transfer coding, see http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec4.html#sec4.4 (third paragraph above section 4.5). I don't know if Drupal supports this (doesn't look like it). While not as nice, for now it appears simpler to implement a proxy along the lines of this patch. My only suggestion would be to add a proxy section to the settings page instead of hardcoding the proxy host/port. -- View: http://drupal.org/node/9706 Edit: http://drupal.org/project/comments/add/9706

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[drupal-devel] cvs log messages
by no-reply＠zind.net 04 Feb '05

04 Feb '05

File: /modules/i18n/patches/i18n_drupal_goto.patch 1.1 /modules/i18n/patches/i18n_drupal_goto_01.patch NONE /modules/i18n/patches/i18n_language_variables.patch 1.1 /modules/i18n/patches/i18n_language_variables_01.patch NONE /modules/i18n/patches/i18n_menu_inc_locale.patch 1.1 /modules/i18n/patches/i18n_menu_inc_locale_01.patch NONE /modules/i18n/patches/i18n_taxonomy_module.patch 1.1 /modules/i18n/patches/i18n_taxonomy_module_01.patch NONE Date: February 4, 2005 - 00:18 User: chx Update to HEAD ---------------------------------------------------------------------- File: /modules/autopath/README.txt 1.2 Date: February 4, 2005 - 00:14 User: mikeryan Several improvements ---------------------------------------------------------------------- File: /modules/autopath/autopath.module 1.4 Date: February 4, 2005 - 00:13 User: mikeryan Several improvements ---------------------------------------------------------------------- File: /modules/i18n/CHANGELOG.txt 1.9 /modules/i18n/i18n.inc 1.8 /modules/i18n/i18n.mysql 1.1 /modules/i18n/i18n_node.inc 1.6 /modules/i18n/i18n_taxonomy.inc 1.5 /modules/i18n/patches/i18n.mysql NONE Date: February 3, 2005 - 23:47 User: jareyero Fixed i18n.mysql Applied patch http://drupal.org/node/15966 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- File: /modules/project/comment.inc 1.40 Date: February 3, 2005 - 22:28 User: dries - Updated to HEAD: node_is_new() is no more. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- File: /sandbox/junyor/import/CHANGELOG 1.6 Date: February 3, 2005 - 22:27 User: junyor Updated with latest changes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- File: /modules/project/issue.inc 1.88 Date: February 3, 2005 - 22:25 User: dries - Updated to HEAD: node_is_new() is no more. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- File: /modules/attachment/attachment.module 1.3.2.1 DRUPAL-4-5 /modules/attachment/attachment.mysql 1.1.2.1 DRUPAL-4-5 /modules/attachment/attachment.pgsql 1.1.2.1 DRUPAL-4-5 /modules/attachment/INSTALL 1.1.2.1 DRUPAL-4-5 Date: February 3, 2005 - 22:17 User: ccourtne * Sync with bug fixes from head ---------------------------------------------------------------------- File: /modules/filemanager/filemanager.module 1.4.2.1 DRUPAL-4-5 Date: February 3, 2005 - 22:09 User: ccourtne * Sync with bug fixes from head ---------------------------------------------------------------------- File: /sandbox/junyor/import/import.php 1.6 Date: February 3, 2005 - 21:20 User: junyor Moved comment creation code back import.php, as it didn't work in blogger.inc ---------------------------------------------------------------------- File: /sandbox/junyor/import/blogger.inc 1.6 Date: February 3, 2005 - 21:19 User: junyor Fixed a problem with the paths for comment user home pages ---------------------------------------------------------------------- File: /modules/spam/spam_mtblacklist/README.txt 1.1 Date: February 3, 2005 - 20:51 User: themike Imported into spam project for packaging. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- File: /modules/spam/spam_mtblacklist/spam_mtblacklist.module 1.1 /modules/spam/spam_mtblacklist/spam_mtblacklist.mysql 1.1 Date: February 3, 2005 - 20:48 User: themike Imported into spam project for packaging. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- File: /modules/actions/actions.module 1.7 Date: February 3, 2005 - 20:42 User: jvandyk fix SQL error when saving configurable actions ---------------------------------------------------------------------- File: /modules/actions/actions.module 1.6 Date: February 3, 2005 - 19:35 User: jvandyk patch by mathias. Use form_get_errors() for validation. Use drupal_goto() after deleting an action. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- File: /modules/actions/actions.module 1.5 Date: February 3, 2005 - 17:41 User: jvandyk better support of configurable actions ---------------------------------------------------------------------- File: /modules/akvaforum/icons/README.txt 1.1 /modules/akvaforum/icons/type-blog.png 1.1 /modules/akvaforum/icons/type-forum.png 1.1 /modules/akvaforum/icons/type-image.png 1.1 /modules/akvaforum/icons/type-node.png 1.1 /modules/akvaforum/icons/type-page.png 1.1 /modules/akvaforum/icons/type-poll.png 1.1 /modules/akvaforum/icons/type-story.png 1.1 /modules/akvaforum/icons/type-weblink.png 1.1 Date: February 3, 2005 - 10:44 User: axel Icons for AkvaForum ---------------------------------------------------------------------- File: /modules/taxonomy_access/taxonomy_access.module 1.29 Date: February 3, 2005 - 04:30 User: pyromanfo Fixed typo with new db name ---------------------------------------------------------------------- File: /modules/workflow/workflow.module 1.14 Date: February 3, 2005 - 04:02 User: jvandyk use name of workflow for selectbox label instead of 'Workflow' ---------------------------------------------------------------------- File: /modules/workflow/workflow.module 1.5.2.6 DRUPAL-4-5 /modules/workflow/workflow.mysql 1.1.2.2 DRUPAL-4-5 Date: February 3, 2005 - 03:18 User: jvandyk parity with HEAD ----------------------------------------------------------------------

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[drupal-devel] a handbook page suggestion
by Negyesi Karoly 04 Feb '05

04 Feb '05

Hi! I'd suggest putting this into the Drupal.org handbook. While hacking a Drupal module is fun, using command line cvs is definitely not. Here is some help learned the hard way (thanks Killes!): If you would like to add a file or a directory, it is the parent directory you need. Once again: the parent directory, not the dir you want to add something to but the parent of it. I can not find any logic in this, but this is so. First, issue a export CVSROOT=:d:icvslogin:cvspasswd@cvs.drupal.org:/cvs/drupal-contrib You would like to add a new file to a module? cvs co contributions/modules/modulename cd contributions/modules copy file into modulename cvs add modules/filename cvs commit Say you want to create a sandbox named ihatecvs. Then do a cvs co contributions/sandbox/weblinks (does not really matter which directory, I like this one, 'cos it is small) cd contributions mkdir sandbox/ihatecvs put some stuff into the directory sandbox/ihatecvs cvs add sandbox/ihatecvs cvs commit Regards Karoly Negyesi

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[drupal-devel] [feature] Enclosure Support for Aggregator
by antipasto 04 Feb '05

04 Feb '05

Project: Drupal -Version: 4.5.0 +Version: 4.5.2 Component: aggregator.module Category: feature requests Priority: normal Assigned to: Anonymous Reported by: geeknews Updated by: antipasto -Status: active +Status: patch Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/drupal_452_rss20.tar.gz (35.63 KB) Here's a patch for 4.5.2, but this will be implemented way better in 4.6: http://writtorrent.sourceforge.net/2005/02/rss-20-feeds-with-enclosures-for… antipasto Previous comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 31, 2005 - 15:32 : geeknews The aggregator should be able to parse the enclosure information out of RSS 2.0 feeds. It should be implemented to recognize and display the links to enclosures. If you want to 1 up the competition add the code to determine standard file types mp3, wma, ogg, etc and place a download Icon within the aggregated content. I have donated and would be willing to help out more to see something like this implemented. -- View: http://drupal.org/node/16485 Edit: http://drupal.org/project/comments/add/16485

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[drupal-devel] [task] Put revisions in their own table
by killes 04 Feb '05

04 Feb '05

Project: Drupal Version: cvs Component: node system Category: tasks Priority: normal Assigned to: killes(a)www.drop.org Reported by: killes(a)www.drop.org Updated by: killes(a)www.drop.org Status: patch @Junyor: Thanks, that's a good sign. Maybe somebody else has an older db to try. @robertDouglass: The first effect you describe is due to drupaldevs running on PHP 5. I am unsure why the second thing does not work. In node_save() the node object has a nid although there is none in the form. Very strange. I've enabled display of db queries on the testsite. killes(a)www.drop.org Previous comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 5, 2004 - 17:25 : killes(a)www.drop.org Currently all node revisions are stored in a serialized field in node.table and retrieved for _each_ page view although they are rarely needed. However, we have agreed that serializing data is bad and that we should try to keep the memory foot print pf Drupal small. Therefore I propose to create a separate revisions table which would be in principle identical to the node table, only that it could have several old copies of the same node. Extra data added by other modules could be added in a serialized field unless we find a better solution. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 5, 2004 - 18:06 : jhriggs I too think the serialized approach is less than desirable, but here's an alternative. This would likely take some considerable rework in core and contrib, but the following is how we handle similar types of situations in our databases at work. It is more elegant that a separate table, and avoids the (almost exact) duplication of a table. Instead of separate tables, keep all revisions of nodes in the node table as follows: * add field: active (0/1 or Y/N) * add field: revision * every revision of a node is stored in the node table; however, only one revision can be active at any given time * nid can no longer be unique -- primary/unique key becomes (nid, active) * any time a node is loaded, updated (without revision), etc., the active version is used. Thoughts? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 5, 2004 - 18:57 : killes(a)www.drop.org I am not opposed to your scheme, but I want to stress the following: * Duplicating a table's structure is not bad (IMHO) as long as the content is different. * having two tables will allow us to have a rather small node table. This is (maybe) a performance gain. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 5, 2004 - 19:37 : jhriggs I don't necessarily think that duplicating a table's structure is _bad_. It just seems to be wasteful and a pain to maintain. (Every change to the node table is made twice...easy to do, but also easy to miss perhaps.) As for performance, as long as nid and the active indicator are indexed, there shouldn't be any performance loss. Also, archiving an old version when making a new revision will be much simpler: just change the active indicator rather than copying an entire node to another table (and ensuring everything gets copied...again a potential maintainance issue). To be honest, I would just like to see the serialized data go away, regarless of what approach is taken. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ July 30, 2004 - 20:49 : Nick Nassar Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/Drupal-Improved_Revision_Schema_07-30-2004.p… (10.47 KB) I'm interested in using Drupal for a large scale wiki-type project. In order to do this, I need revisions to be in their own table. Attached is a patch to do just that. Most of the changes are pretty self explanatory. Spreading out node data across two tables meant that I had to add database functions to do locking/transactions. Without this, race conditions in which the database becomes corrupted are possible. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ July 30, 2004 - 20:54 : Nick Nassar Oh yeah... The patch is a diff against Drupal CVS ------------------------------------------------------------------------ July 31, 2004 - 01:00 : Anonymous Gerhard speaking. Nick, thanks a lot for your nice patch! It saves me a great deal of labour. I looked through it and immediately liked it. You not only put the old revisions into a new table but also the current one. Do you have an estimate how much more expensive the additional join is? Besides a few minor coding style issues I found a major one: Just a few hours before you uploaded your patch JonBob's node access patch hit core. That means your patch won't apply anymore as all the queries you change have been changed. Can I bug you to update your patch? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ July 31, 2004 - 02:11 : Anonymous Also I think that your upgrade path loses existing revisions. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ July 31, 2004 - 03:39 : drumm I think this is the proper way to do things. No columns are duplicated, there is no serialized data, and only the fields that are logically revised are stored. Nothing jumped out at me as a way to have my node modules be able to keep a table of revisions of additional fields. I'm guessing this could be done within the confines of _insert and _update. Assuming the upgrade path works and modules can extend it I give it a +1. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ July 31, 2004 - 15:40 : Nick Nassar It figures that just as I finish a big patch, another patch comes along and breaks it. Oh well, it should be a pretty easy to fix. I'll work on it. Fixing the upgrade path to keep revisions should be fairly painless. I found another issue that needs to be fixed before this patch gets merged. There format of a node needs to be stored for each revision. Otherwise, for modules that store a format for the nodes, such as page and book, if you write one revision in PHP and the next in HTML, the PHP revision will be displayed as HTML. This is part of a larger issue of how node modules should store revisions of additional fields. I think each module that wants to do this should create another table with (nid, revid) as the primary key. Just as when they want to add fields to a node they create another table with nid as the primary key. As far as performance goes, for sites that make heavy use of revisions, an extra join on primary keys is going to be a lot faster than grabbing all of the revisions from that database everytime. We would need to run benchmarks to determine is the overall difference in speed is for an average site is a gain or a loss. I'm guessing it's very minor either way. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ August 23, 2004 - 14:55 : Nick Nassar Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/Drupal-Improved_Revision_Schema_08-23-2004.p… (10.92 KB) Here's an updated patch against CVS that puts revisions in their own table, provides an upgrade path, and fixes the format related bugs in the last patch. Hopefully, this can make it into CVS as soon as the freeze is over. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ August 23, 2004 - 15:10 : moshe weitzman Interesting patch ... drumm's question is still outstanding. how do modules store revisions of their fields? Are they expected to manage this on their own? Thats not how it works today. As an aside, i am seeing profile_ fields in my node.revisions column. One could argue that those need not be saved. They pertain to the node author, not to the node itself. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ August 23, 2004 - 17:14 : Nick Nassar Having modules be responsible for storing revisions of their own fields is a side-effect of storing revision data in tables. There's really no way around it. However, revisions generally don't make sense for node types that don't have PHP/HTML content, such as polls. I think it's going to be a pretty rare scenario for a new node type to want another field to change per-revision, so it's a pretty good trade-off. Storing fields that shouldn't be part of revisions, such as the profile_ fields, is a side-effect of storing revisions as serialized objects. Applying this patch will free up that wasted space. :) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ August 23, 2004 - 18:20 : Anonymous There should be a hook that let's the module choose whether it supports history. This way a module author can prevent the user from doing something that may break his module or just cause undefined behavior. If the module doesn't support history then don't let the user/admin choose to add history to nodes of that type. Craig ------------------------------------------------------------------------ August 23, 2004 - 20:23 : Nick Nassar I agree, there should be an API change to make specifying support for revisions easier. In the interests of keeping patches small and keeping to one change per patch, I think the API change should be a separate issue. A sort of ad-hoc API to decide whether or not a module supports revisions by default already exists. Instead of having a hook, modules set the default value of the "Create new revision" field in the edit form. The admin can change this option in admin/node/configure/defaults. This patch doesn't change that. Revisions are broken for node types that have their own database structure, like polls, even when storing them as serialized objects. This patch doesn't change that, either. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ October 26, 2004 - 03:35 : moshe weitzman I'm guessing that someone is going to have to demonstrate that this patch performs as well as current drupal before it gets comitted. i think this patch is a few benchmarks from being comitted. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ October 27, 2004 - 02:04 : Nick Nassar Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/Drupal-Improved_Revision_Schema_10-26-2004.p… (11 KB) I ran some really unscientific benchmarks, and it looks like this patch has a negligible affect on performance. I used apache bench and the database from theregular.org, which doesn't contain any revisions (worst case scenario for this patch) and contains several hundred nodes. Both the patched and unpatched versions hovered between 2.36 and 2.38 requests per second. The command I used was: ab -n50 -C 'PHPSESSID=b01a9f92880ef215b0ed6f1314a5eba2' http://192.168.0.100/ An updated patch that should apply to CVS is attached. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ October 27, 2004 - 02:05 : Nick Nassar I ran some really unscientific benchmarks, and it looks like this patch has a negligible affect on performance. I used apache bench and the database from theregular.org, which doesn't contain any revisions (worst case scenario for this patch) and contains several hundred nodes. Both the patched and unpatched versions hovered between 2.36 and 2.38 requests per second. The command I used was: ab -n50 -C 'PHPSESSID=b01a9f92880ef215b0ed6f1314a5eba2' http://192.168.0.100/ An updated patch that should apply to CVS is attached. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ October 27, 2004 - 02:05 : Nick Nassar Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/Drupal-Improved_Revision_Schema_10-26-2004.p… (11 KB) I ran some really unscientific benchmarks, and it looks like this patch has a negligible affect on performance. I used apache bench and the database from theregular.org, which doesn't contain any revisions (worst case scenario for this patch) and contains several hundred nodes. Both the patched and unpatched versions hovered between 2.36 and 2.38 requests per second. The command I used was: ab -n50 -C 'PHPSESSID=b01a9f92880ef215b0ed6f1314a5eba2' http://192.168.0.100/ An updated patch that should apply to CVS is attached. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ November 15, 2004 - 06:05 : elias1884 please overthink the revision system default workflow as well. don't look at the revision system as an isolated system but as a part of the whole workflow system! if you combine revisions with the moderation queue the most logic default workflow would be like that: auth user creates node (revision #0) admin approves the node (status = 1, moderation = 0) => node publicly available auth user finds typo and changes node (revision #1, status = 0, moderation = 1) ------- what happens at that point at the moment is, that the node is not accessible anymore at all until the new revision is approved by admin. of course the new revision should not go online until reviewed and approved, this is absolutely correct, but there is no reason to not take the old revision offline, since it was already approved and should therefore be online until the new revision is approved. it is not practical if a node disappears only because the author corrected a typo. ------- admin approves the node (status = 1, moderation = 0) eventhough I first thought a plain boolean active field would not be capable of providing that functionality if finally came to the conclusion, that it can. The only thing to do is to not set that bit, when a new revision is created, but when it is approved (in case moderation is activated under default workflow). Every revision should have its own moderation, status and active field and on approval they are set like this (status=1, moderation=0, active=Y). When you wanna rollback to an old revision, you can chose between all revisions that already have the moderation bit set back to 0 again and the published to 1. There should be an extra permission for rollback! another concern that I have about the default workflow is, that users can't see the content, they have just created, when moderation is enabled. Eventhough, there is a big fat "submission accepted" presented after submissions, unexperienced users tend to question the information those stupid tincans give them, if they can't find their content afterwards. Many users are really lazy bastards and they don't even read the status messages. The best feedback about whether his story was submitted successfully or not of course is, if he can find the story somewhere on the site, maybe with a status message on top of it, mentioning, that the content is currently not publicly available since it has not been approved yet. there should be a my content section under my account, like somebody is trying to do with the workspace module I guess. so my suggestion is to make (status=0, moderation=1) still available for the creator under a my content section somewhere! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ November 24, 2004 - 05:21 : Nick Nassar I agree. The current workflow for moderation queues and revisions needs to change, but this patch isn't the place for it. The patch is already too big, and it only does the backend stuff. Instead of adding more to this patch and making it take even longer to get into core, would you mind creating a new issue for your UI suggestions, so the those changes can be added as a separate patch? Thanks, Nick ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 11, 2004 - 13:26 : Dries This patch is _much_ needed so I'd love to see someone revive it. In order for this patch to be accepted, the following needs to be done: Update this patch to CVS HEAD. Rename revid to vid. Rename node_rev to node_revisions. Rename node_rev.changed to node_revisions.timestamp. Rename $rnode to $revision. Fix the coding style to match Drupal's: proper spacing, single quotes where possible, proper variable names. Benchmark this patch with a large database with enough revisions. I'd be happy to benchmark this on my local copy of the drupal.org database. The book.log field should probably move to the node_revisions table. This can be done in a separate patch. Investigate whether transactions are well-supported. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 13, 2004 - 01:25 : killes(a)www.drop.org Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/Drupal-Improved_Revision_Schema_10-26-2004-r… (11.02 KB) I've worked a bit on the patch (coding style issues as mentioned by Dries). One thing I noticed is that the patch uses REPLACE. IIRC this needs to be chagned to "UPDATE, if fail INSERT" for pgsql compatibility. Nick, are you still interested in working on that patch? I'd like to know how it works on your site and work on getting it into core. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 13, 2004 - 13:33 : Dries Gerhard: your patch does not apply. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 13, 2004 - 18:10 : killes(a)www.drop.org Yes, I know, that was the same version as I mailed to you earlier. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 13, 2004 - 22:02 : killes(a)www.drop.org Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/revisions.patch (52.96 KB) Ok, upüdated the patch to cvs. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 14, 2004 - 09:58 : Dries Some more comments: db_begin_transaction() and db_end_transaction() do not belong in database.inc, but in database.mysql.inc and database.pgsql.inc respectively. The node module calls node_revisionsision_list() which is not defined. (Fxed that on my local copy.) Do db_begin_transaction() and db_end_transaction() deprecate Jeremy's table locking patch? The upgrade path assigns the wrong user ID to each revision. The upgrade path assigns the wrong date to each revision (that or a node's revision page shows the wrong usernames/dates). The coding style needs a bit of work, but we can worry about that later. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 14, 2004 - 18:34 : Nick Nassar If you need any help getting those things fixed, just let me know. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 14, 2004 - 18:50 : Nick Nassar How this relates to Jeremy's node locking patch: There was lots of discussion, and node locking was decided against because from an end user point of view you never want a node to be locked. He's now advocating for a much simpler patch that warns users if their changes will overwrite someone elses. That patch still has a race condition, which might be fixed using db_begin_transaction(). http://drupal.org/node/6025 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 14, 2004 - 23:26 : killes(a)www.drop.org Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/revisions_0.patch (55.96 KB) Here is an updated patch that tries to address Dries concerns. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 15, 2004 - 09:32 : Dries Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/revisions-bug.png (76.06 KB) It didn't fix the aforementioned bugs. See attached screenshot. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 6, 2005 - 21:15 : killes(a)www.drop.org Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/revisions_1.patch (51.77 KB) Ok, here is a new version. Dries and myself worked hart at it, so please have a look. what is still missing - database upgrades for the core modules with an own table - contrib modules need an upgrade too. - do we need nid and vid in both the node and the node_revisions table? - the amount of sql queries means a good stress testing for large databases. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 19, 2005 - 22:43 : killes(a)www.drop.org Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/revisions_2.patch (49.49 KB) Here is an updated patch. We discussed to keep the current title in node module and also in the revisiosn table. This is content duplication but will save many joins as many queries only need the title of a node. Discussion is welcome. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 20, 2005 - 00:33 : killes(a)www.drop.org Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/revisions_3.patch (29.93 KB) I've implemented the aforementioned solution. This makes the patch much smaller. The patch now also removes taxonomy_node_has_term() which wasn't used anywhere. I'd really apprciate if some people could test drive the patch. It will be another huge improvement for 4.6. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 20, 2005 - 01:05 : killes(a)www.drop.org Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/revisions_4.patch (30 KB) Another revision. Steven didn't like my literal $node->vid in queries. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 20, 2005 - 02:10 : killes(a)www.drop.org - database upgrades for the core modules with an own table - contrib modules need an upgrade too. - do we need nid and vid in both the node and the node_revisions table? - the amount of sql queries means a good stress testing for large databases. These issues are still open, btw. Especially the first one needs to be tackled. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 25, 2005 - 21:11 : killes(a)www.drop.org Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/revisions_5.patch (51.13 KB) Here is a patch that has the database tables updated for forum, book, and page module. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 29, 2005 - 23:55 : killes(a)www.drop.org Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/revisions_6.patch (49.18 KB) Yet another update to keep it working with head. The patch now also removes the table definitons for the page table. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 29, 2005 - 23:57 : killes(a)www.drop.org Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/revisions_7.patch (55.69 KB) Sorry, that was the old version, this is the right one. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 31, 2005 - 20:55 : killes(a)www.drop.org Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/revisions_8.patch (55.71 KB) Updated once more. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 31, 2005 - 21:52 : Dries Anyone to help review/test this? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 31, 2005 - 22:22 : killes(a)www.drop.org Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/revisions_9.patch (49.29 KB) Updated again, the update functions occurred twice. Thanks Bart. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 2, 2005 - 01:27 : killes(a)www.drop.org Don't know if the db I am using is corrupted or what. I still do have some didficulties. The latest patch is attached. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 2, 2005 - 01:27 : killes(a)www.drop.org Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/revisions_10.patch (49.67 KB) I am probably slowly going mad ... ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 2, 2005 - 02:54 : killes(a)www.drop.org Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/revisions_11.patch (48.95 KB) The update issue still needs investigating. This patch is updated for cvs. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 2, 2005 - 21:20 : killes(a)www.drop.org Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/revisions_12.patch (49.83 KB) Ok, here is a new version. I've solved my troubles with book.module. There are still some issues with forum module. Possibly due to inconsistent database. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 2, 2005 - 22:31 : killes(a)www.drop.org Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/revisions_13.patch (49.83 KB) Turns out the drupal.org database had indeed some quirks. Please run this query in your oldest db and tell me the result: select nid,type from node where type like '%/%'; If you get a non-zero result we might need to add another security update. The patch could use still more testing, though. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 3, 2005 - 02:16 : killes(a)www.drop.org Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/revisions_14.patch (49 KB) Ok, we are getting somewhere. At a first glance the update is working. There is a problem remaining: the revisions tab will be shown whether the node has revisions or not. Not sure we can/need to fix this. People with a drupal.org account can log in at http://killes.drupaldevs.org/revision/ and poke around. Your permissions will be the same as on drupal.org. Feel free to vreak everything but don't forget to file complaints here. (Note: this is only a pruned version of the drupal.org database with all project nodes and nodes with nids > 7000 dropped). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 3, 2005 - 05:19 : killes(a)www.drop.org Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/revisions_15.patch (52.39 KB) There was some error in node_save and also the patches to the database.inc files got lost... ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 3, 2005 - 08:07 : robertDouglass Submitting book pages doesn't work on your test site. It puts the entire content of the preview inside the body textarea. I wrote a sentence in the body and the log, and pressing preview put several lines of HTML containing both sentences in the body textarea on the preview page, plus the book page wouldn't submit. -R ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 3, 2005 - 08:50 : Junyor 0 results here. I started using Drupal with version 4.4, though. -- View: http://drupal.org/node/7582 Edit: http://drupal.org/project/comments/add/7582

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[drupal-devel] [bug] book pages dishonor node_access
by Anonymous 04 Feb '05

04 Feb '05

Project: Drupal Version: cvs Component: book.module Category: bug reports Priority: normal Assigned to: moshe weitzman Reported by: moshe weitzman Updated by: Anonymous Status: patch +1... the node_access fix is much-needed and the revision pending indicator would certainly be helpful on drupal.org and other sites using the moderation system. Anonymous Previous comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 31, 2005 - 02:41 : moshe weitzman Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/tree.diff (921 bytes) Book pages slighty disobey the node_access system because they always return a value for book_access('update'). This simple patch causes us to use node_access when the user has a chance of being able to update the current page. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 3, 2005 - 16:34 : moshe weitzman Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/book_25.patch (882 bytes) i had the conditions reversed. thanks jonbob. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 3, 2005 - 17:36 : sulleleven i noticed this a while back... thnx for the patch. would a similar reason apply to the project modules issue nodes? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 3, 2005 - 18:11 : moshe weitzman Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/book_26.patch (1.37 KB) this version adds a 'revision pending' message as needed at bottom of the node view. the lack of this indicator confuses authors on drupal.org why they have no edit tab, and may remind recent editors why their edits are not showing up yet. sorry for mixing two unrelated ideas in one patch. at least they affect the same single file -- View: http://drupal.org/node/16462 Edit: http://drupal.org/project/comments/add/16462

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[drupal-devel] [feature] Improve functionality of block generation for book module
by Anonymous 04 Feb '05

04 Feb '05

Project: Drupal Version: cvs Component: book.module Category: feature requests Priority: normal Assigned to: andremolnar Reported by: nysus Updated by: Anonymous Status: patch This patch seems to modify the blocks and menu tables directly from within book.module. (in the new book_build_menu_module_menu function) This sets a terrible precedent for other modules. IMO, these tables should be modified by functions defined within the block module or menu module (or menu.inc). Modifying the tables randomly throughout many other points in the code makes changes to these tables difficult and makes troubleshooting problems much trickier. Let's not sacrafice code organization for the sake of making the patch as small as possible. Anonymous Previous comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 9, 2004 - 06:12 : nysus Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/book_19.patch (4.85 KB) Attached is a patch for the book module that does the following: 1) Allows book blocks to appear on any page at any time, not just when a node from the book is being viewed. 2) Allows multiple book blocks to appear on the same page. This functionality is achieved by the automatic creation of individual blocks for each book when the book is created. Simply enable the book's block to enjoy the benefits of 1 & 2 above. If the blocks are not enabled, the blocks will appear only when a node from that block is being viewed (the same way it works now). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 9, 2004 - 12:35 : andremolnar Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/book_19_1.patch (4.84 KB) +1 This is great. A good many people have asked for something like this, and I think its a nice solution. But in the end this isn't up to me. One minor error in the patch... + $result = db_query('SELECT n.title, b.block, b.nid FROM {book} b INNER JOIN {node} n on n.nid = b.nid WHERE b.parent = 0'); b.block is not a valid field in this query. this updated patch removes reference to it. andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 9, 2004 - 13:54 : nysus Glad you like it and thanks for fixing that up. It was left over from an older version of my patch. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 9, 2004 - 13:54 : andremolnar Steve, If I apply this patch, and I attempt to configure one of the newly created blocks. I noticed that for some reason the block.module is returning "true" at line 249 (of the block module)- and is creating a form for module-specific configuration. But all that shows up on the screen is the word "array". Can you trace this back to see why - and maybe update the patch. I can continue to test your changes - anything to help this patch make it into core. andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 9, 2004 - 15:29 : nysus Hmmm...probably because I tested my patch on my version of Drupal, version 4.5.1. I'm having no problems. Are you using a cvs version of Drupal to test. If so, I'll set up cvs on my site and track this down. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 9, 2004 - 18:53 : drumm See http://drupal.org/node/12347 for information on how the block system has been updated. When I saw that the elseif ($op == 'view') was taken out I knew immedaitely that there was something weird about this patch. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 9, 2004 - 18:58 : nysus OK, thanks for the tip. Sorry for the confusion. Still kind of new to making open source contributions and it's easy for me to overlook some obvious stuff like this. I'll fix this up when I get a chance. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 9, 2004 - 19:06 : Dries Please do, because this being a new feature, it has no chance getting committed to the DRUPAL-4-5 branch. The DRUPAL-4-5 branch is in bugfix-mode. New features go into CVS HEAD. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 9, 2004 - 22:32 : Dries There is quite a bit of duplicated code in the patch. Maybe it can be simplified (using a function)? Either way, it is a little weird. I haven't tried the path, and I'm not sure I understood the description. It's somewhat vague. Is the book module exporting multiple blocks that are nearly identical, yet have different display behavior? If so, why not add a simple block configuration setting to the original book block? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 10, 2004 - 02:51 : nysus Dries, Yes, there is some code that can be factored out and some general cleaning up that can be done. It was a little tricky to write so I left it kind of ragged around the edges until I'm sure there are no bugs. It has worked very well on 4.5.1 but I obviously need to update it to work with cvs. I'll be on that soon. As far as what it does: 1) For every new book that a user creates, a new block is associated with it. So if you create "Book A", "Book B", "Book C", you will get three new blocks visible on the block administration page called "Book A", "Book B", "Book C". The original "Book Navigation" block is still there, too. The functionality of the "Book Navigation" block is not affected at all by this patch. 2) If Book A's block is enabled, the block containing its menu will appear not only when a node within Book A is viewed, but at all times (unless the user suppresses it on certain pages with the "path" feature). When any node is that is NOT in Book A is viewed, Book A's menu still appears but it is fully collapsed. When a node that DOES belong to Book A is viewed, Book A's Book menu expands accordingly. 3) The user can also enable Book B & C's block, and have their menus appear in a block at all times as well. 4) If none of the book's blocks are enabled by the user, the module will behave just as it did without the patch. That is, when the "Book Navigation" block is enabled, the only time any book menu will appear is when a book node is being viewed. 5) It's important to note (and this was the tricky part to write) that if both the "Book Navigation" block is enabled and "Book A" is enabled, they will play nice with each other and not do nasty things like create the same book menu twice. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 10, 2004 - 05:51 : nysus Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/book_20.patch (5.37 KB) Andre, Attached is a new patch that will resolve the problem of the block-specific stuff showing on the block configuration form. Let me know if you spot any other bugs. If it looks good to you, I'll go to work making the code look leaner and prettier. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 10, 2004 - 07:26 : nysus Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/book_21.patch (4 KB) Dries, Andre: Here is a new and improved streamlined version of the patch. Have a look if you get a chance. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 10, 2004 - 08:11 : nysus Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/book_22.patch (4.15 KB) Found a bug in the last version that would cause the block to jump to a different location. I think this should do it. Everything appear to work well (famous last words). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 10, 2004 - 14:49 : andremolnar Steve: bugs appear to be gone, and I didn't run across any other errors. This is functioning exactly as described. everyone: I personally would encourage support for this functionality. Book is a powerful navigation building tool in a site, not only with its ability to move next and back through a hierarchy of pages - but also its ability to build the appropriate navigation block without further user intervention (unlike the admin features in the menu module or taxonomy). The most frequently cited complaint about the book module is its inflexibility when it comes to when and where the block shows up. I also frequently hear requests for the ability to show multiple book blocks at the same time. Up until now the best alternatives suggested required users to do a hack (e.g. build a custom block that calls such and such a hook). Most abandon their request at that point because its over their heads. With this patch all those requests are covered and more. Now all books can automatically have their own block and admins can easily decide when and where each of those individual blocks show up (left right, up down) and coupled with the new configuration features of the block module - its very easy for admins to decide on which individual pages a block will show up. I would be interested what other have to say about this feature. My only reservation (which is minor compared to the benefits of the functionality offered) is that there is no way to turn this functionality off. i.e. The default behaviour is to build individual blocks for each book. If there could be a way to toggle this feature on and off somewhere - it would be perfect. Still, AS IS - this is a major improvement and offers great flexibility to admins and site creators. andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 10, 2004 - 15:04 : Anonymous Andre, Thanks for the feedback on the usefulness of this module. Glad I could pitch in and help. I agree about the inability to turn the feature on/off and I was thinking about that myself. I think it could easily be accomplished by creating a checkbox in the "book navigation" block individual configuration's settings. Call it "Enable individual book blocks." When enabled, the individual book blocks will appear on the block administration menu. One question: Where would the state of this checkbox get saved? Has Drupal moved away from serializing data in the data base? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 10, 2004 - 18:36 : Dries I'm afraid that 'Enable individual book blocks.' is not descriptive/clear at all. Are you suggesting a setting to toggle between 'show block on all pages' and 'show block on book pages only'? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 10, 2004 - 19:45 : nysus Dries, No. Andre and I suggest a setting within the "Book Navigation" cofiguration page, that would toggle whether or not individual books appear on the list of all blocks on the block administration page. Hence the name 'Enable individual book navigation blocks.' The help text for this checkbox might read something like: "By default, a book's navigation block is visible only when a page from that book is being viewed. Check this box if you want more control over where and when an book's navigation block is visible. You will then be able to control the book's navigation block location and visibility settings on the "admin/block" page." Hope this makes it pretty clear. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 10, 2004 - 20:08 : Dries I understand what you are trying to do, but not how you are trying to do it, or how the setting is supposed to work. I guess I'll have to try it when a new patch lands. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 11, 2004 - 09:52 : nysus Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/book_23.patch (5.02 KB) Alright, fellas, I'm proud to unveil my crowning achievement in the open source development world (no big deal to most of you guys but pretty good for a hack like me). Thanks for all the input so far. It's been helpful. I've streamlined the heck out of it per Dries suggestion and I've created an option to turn this functionality on an off per Andre's suggestion. Does this look good to you guys? Anything else I have to fix or improve? Thanks. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 11, 2004 - 13:02 : Dries I tried the patch. It works great but to me, the 'Give books their own block' settings seems to be redundant. Why not export the current book navigation block, along with an additional block for each book? Looks a lot simpler to me. I think I spotted a bug: orphaned book pages (or possibly book pages that are unpublished) appear to be getting book navigation blocks. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 11, 2004 - 17:34 : nysus I'll see if I can fix the bug. Might be tricky. But I don't understand your recommendation to "export the current book navigation block, along with an additional block for each book". Can you expand on this thought? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 11, 2004 - 18:06 : nysus Dries, I am unable to duplicate the bug. I have three orphaned pages. I also tried unpublishing some pages. But as far as I can tell, the patch works as expected. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 11, 2004 - 19:00 : Dries If you can't reproduce the problem, chances are my node/book table is somewhat fubar. As for the configuration option. I suggest removing it and to always make these new blocks available on the /admin/block configuration screen. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 11, 2004 - 19:52 : moshe weitzman I am hoping that we maintain the option to keep the behavior where the appropriate book block only shows up when its book page viewed. this is a nice, tidy arrangement. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 11, 2004 - 20:03 : nysus Yes, if you don't enable any of the individual book blocks, the a book's block (i.e. navigation menu) will only appear when a page in a book is viewed. In other words, you have the option to have the book block act like this patch isn't even installed. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 11, 2004 - 20:54 : Dries I guess I'll have to try the patch again, because I don't understand why it works like this -- or at least, why it can't be made simpler. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 11, 2004 - 21:13 : nysus Can you be more specific? Why it works like what? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 11, 2004 - 21:24 : nysus Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/book_24.patch (4.1 KB) This patch reverses a change made in the last patch which required a user to enable individual book block before they could enable any individual book blocks. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 11, 2004 - 21:41 : andremolnar As I mentioned earlier I am *fine* with either version of this patch as long as it makes it to core. But, as I said earlier, I clearly think the preference for admins would be to have the option to enable or disable this functionality. BTW - if this does make it in, I would be happy to create a Handbook page that describes the new features - something like "how to build robust site navigation using the book module". (on or after December 17th). andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 12, 2004 - 12:11 : Anonymous I am not at all happy with these features. They are incosistant, confusing and should use exising methods and UIs. May main concern is the incosistancy: it is confusing, will require extra attention with each core code change, adds extra logic to the core, and is not re-useable. so here are my questions: 1) why do we not use the menu system and apis to build and adminster the trees? Saves code, does not add extra UIs, and gives users more power. 2) why do we need that extra showing logic? a book block should not get exeptional if clauses, it should use the existing path setting methods on block admin. extra logic is confusing for administrators (hey, i set the path so that the book-block should show up here, but it does not, why?) we should really not provide extra logic in the block hook, but should rather use default settings in block admin (the book could fill the bookblock sql cells with custom paths, for example) 3) we should avoid extra UIs. We already have far too much, and far too much different ones. Please rather improve the block admin, than add new separate interfaces. 4) why do book blocks need al these expeptions in the first place? If they are so exeptional, we could consider not using blocks, but something else, like in-line book layout (pages with the index etc) 5) why did you not choose for a general, standard, block gerneation API? that way modules, such as taxonomy, image gallery, weblinks, article, etc can reuse it and introduce block gernation. All that sayd, i like the idea of this functionality, but i fear for a great useability downfall if we start introducing all sorts of exeptions for all sorts of modules. Because now chances are very big that taxonomy, image gallery etc will need to introduce other UIs, other code, new methods and new documentation, if they too want some sort of better block handling. so a -1 from me. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 12, 2004 - 12:12 : Bèr Kessels ^^--- That was me (bèr kessels) forgot to log in..... ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 12, 2004 - 12:34 : nysus I'm not going to pretend I can argue if my patch does or does not fit well into Drupal's larger architecture. My motivation for writing it is that I had an immediate need to create an easy way to make it easy for users to create menus. I'll let others decide whether or not the patch has merit from the big picture perspective. But if it doesn't, why not just use it for its immediate benefits and then throw it away when something better comes along? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 12, 2004 - 13:01 : Dries My summary is this: +1 on the functionality, -1 on the implementation. The code itself is good, but the usability/integration is not. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 12, 2004 - 13:13 : nysus When you say "usability" is that from the user's perspective or the code maintainers? I'm guessing it's the latter but I'm unsure. What about the idea of using the patch until a more permanent solution comes along? Yes, it's much better to live in a home with indoor plumbing but why not use the outhouse while you wait for a toilet to get installed? Or are there other considerations I'm overlooking that would make this a bad idea? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 12, 2004 - 13:20 : Goba nysus it is just generally against the Drupal philosophy to add improperly implemented functionality until something better comes along. There even used to be ocassions in Drupal releases, when some functionality was removed (not fixed) for a release, because its implementation was not adequate. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 12, 2004 - 13:55 : Dries Usability for the user. The extra setting on the block configuration page is both confusing and awkward. I don't understand why things must be configured/enabled that way (see my and Ber's previous comments on this issue). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 12, 2004 - 14:03 : nysus Well, just for the record, I reversed that functionality per your suggestion and uploaded the patch. The indiviudal book blocks now appear automatically. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 13, 2004 - 13:56 : Bèr Kessels Hi, I am sure you can make not only simpler, but better usefull for admins and users. All you need to do is use the menus for this. i.e. make a menu entry for each book page. For each book make a menu on level 0, without a parent. that way they become a seoprate menu, each with an own block. it saves code, makes things more consistent, and most important, uses drupal functionality where it should. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 13, 2004 - 14:50 : nysus Ber, Are you suggesting that for every single book page that a menu item be created? That's really not practical. That was my main motivation for writing this patch: to make it easy to put links, not necessarily related to one another, into a block. Any more pages than 10 and the sheer tedium of the job would prevent anyone from ever doing that. The menu.module is great, but adding new menu items is far from quick and painless. I just added about 10 to my menu for different taxonomies on my site and it wasn't fun. Plus, if you do as you suggest, there is also the problem of the book showing up twice. It will be generated by the menu and then it will be generated again by the book module which is programmed to design a block. You'd have to put some logic in the book.module _block hook to try to anticipate if a user has enabled a book in the menu. That wouldn't be pretty code. I'm all for putting automatic generation of book navigation blocks as part of the menu module. It does make more sense to have it there. But it forces me to ask the question: "Then why do we currently have code in the book module that generates a menu? Shouldn't that belong in the menu.module, too?" ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 13, 2004 - 22:31 : killes(a)www.drop.org I think what Ber is trying to say is that you can write a contrib module that monitors the changes to the book table and creates menu items automatically. nodeapi is your friend. I would also prefer this solution. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 15, 2004 - 16:39 : Anonymous ""Then why do we currently have code in the book module that generates a menu? Shouldn't that belong in the menu.module, too?" " Because it's old code. It would be nice if book.module generated this block using its _menu hook, so that the admin would have a few options in terms of configuration. "Plus, if you do as you suggest, there is also the problem of the book showing up twice. It will be generated by the menu and then it will be generated again by the book module which is programmed to design a block. " No. The old code which manually builds a block in book.module would be removed. Book blocks would only be generated by the menu. This would also have the added benefit of allow the administrator to easily place a book in an appropriate spot in the menu tree, while still allowing the possibility of displaying it in a separate block. Because of menu caching, I don't expect a large performance hit for creating the menu items. "That was my main motivation for writing this patch: to make it easy to put links, not necessarily related to one another, into a block. " It sounds like instead of (mis)using book.module, your time would be better spent in a usability improvement to menu.module so it's easier to do this. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 16, 2004 - 06:55 : nysus Thanks for the feedback and input. I appreciate it. However, I would also appreciate if you took more care to avoid the condescending tone in your post: "It sounds like instead of (mis)using book.module, your time would be better spent in a usability improvement to menu.module so it's easier to do this. " It's really quite unnecessary and off-putting. Though it won't stop me from contributing to Drupal in the future, I'm sure others would be really turned off by such a patronizing comment and it could dissuade them. I'd like the Drupal community to be a welcoming and friendly place that will inspire people to contribute, not discourage them. Thanks. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 16, 2004 - 10:07 : Bèr Kessels nyesus, Please do not start /that/ discussion here. :) Drupal community is known fo being direct, maybe because of the big number of western-Europeans attending, maybe because of other reasons. No-one commented that you are wasting your time. But the commentor was telling you somthing likethis: "If you would follow the previous sugeestions, your added feature would be much better appreciated, and will probably work much better for you too". He/she was by no means telling you to stop your silly coding, or anything in that line. He/She only wanted to show you the obvious and better direction. We often deal with issues that add some feature, and a complete new UI, because the author does not like, or cannot use the existing UIs and features. This is nogt good, because if that same author would have spend his/her time on improving that existing functionality or UI (improving is not neccesarily the same as extending!!) that code and time would benefit all much better. Thats what the commentor tried to say. And so is it here: If you dislike the way the books handle the blocks, and if you do not want to use the menu, because you do not like its UI, then do not add another UI and more features, but rather merge these, and improve the parts (in the menu) you dislike. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 16, 2004 - 10:35 : Dries We can worry about the menu integration later. Let's focus on the new option's usability/interaction design first. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 16, 2004 - 14:51 : nysus I understand what the commenter was saying and like I said, I appreciate and understand it. I'm not upset and I'm not looking for an argument, I was just being direct as well. :) As part of the Drupal community (albeit a minor player), all I'm saying is that I would like to see folks not have a tin ear to the humanity in all of us. It will help make Drupal an even stronger community and attract even more talented developers. Human interaction is part of the development process. Whether we like it or not, we must cope and deal with it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 18, 2004 - 09:54 : Dries I thought some more about this and am starting to believe that integration with the menu system should take priority. Here are common cool scenario's: I want to create a separate navigation block for the 'Drupal handbook'. I want to add a menu item called 'handbook' to the user block. That is, I want the book navigation to be part of the existing user navigation block. I want to add a menu item called 'handbook' to the top-level navigation menu. How would that work from a user's point of view? What do I have to click and where to configure this? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 21, 2004 - 18:47 : andremolnar I was actually thinking about the same thing last night (must have been something in the arctic air). / 2. I want to add a menu item called 'handbook' to the user block. That is, I want the book navigation to be part of the existing user navigation block. 3. I want to add a menu item called 'handbook' to the top-level navigation menu. / This is already possible (to a certain extent) with the current Book.module and Menu.module - A 'Books' menu item is created in the user navigation by having the Book.module enabled. Menu.module allows you to enable/disable this menu item. Menu.module also allows you to re-name this menu item. But, this only helps if you only intend to have 1 book (or else the name 'Handbook' is misleading if the user finds more than 1 book listed). - so this isn't good enough (or is it). /1. I want to create a separate navigation block for the 'Drupal handbook'./ This is what I was trying to figure out. Not just this, but a different way to do what Nysus was attempting. i.e. create a menu block for each and every book that is created. There is a way to write code that would (re)build a 'custom menu' on every add/edit/update to a book page - or book outline update. Custom menu's automatically have a block created for them. But, this I think would be a misleading use of the 'custom' menu - as the menu would not be custom if they are a part of core. So, I would think that two new constants could be added to the menu.inc file - MENU_BOOK_MENU - and MENU_BOOK_ITEM - each would behave as custom menu's, but would be reserved for books. These menu types should NOT show up in the Menu.module administration - because the administration of the book_menu items would be done by administering the book itself (adding an item, removing an item, moving an item up/down in the hierarchy, assigning parents etc.). However, the blocks that the book_menus would create would show up in the block administration (so users could enable/disable each block - and decide where on the site they show up). The existing book block logic would be removed. So the logic would be: If a creates a book in the book administration page - the Book.module automatically creates a new MENU_BOOK_MENU Any time a user adds to or updates or delets a book page - the entire book menu is deleted and recreated based on the hierarchy defined by the book itself. The blocks for each book would show up in block administration. Any thoughts - I know that this doesn't exactly address points 1 and 2 - but it could act as a first step. Is this approach a bad idea? It would add special conditions for the proposed book menu's - but books would be a special case. Even if people don't like this solution, maybe it will give someone a better idea. I'd love to hear them. andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 21, 2004 - 22:55 : Boris Mann +1 to this andre I had promised to put down my thoughts on this matter, as it relates to 1) primary and secondary links and how they are managed and 2) auto-generation of primary/secondary navigation based on book outlines So, for 1), we currently have functional-but-not-very-usable plain textfields to manage primary and secondary links. I would like to see menu.module used to control all navigation links, whether it is the navigation block or primary/secondary links. What is needed: a) default system menus labelled "primary" and "secondary" which would store; this is where modules could insert navigation b) support for full URLs (e.g. http://myexternaldomain.com) instead of just path 2) if we got 1 working, and andre does his book menus, this could get taken care of automatically. Basically, for brochureware/business/etc. sites that have static content, you could have a root book as one of the primary navigation links, and then the secondary links are generated automatically. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 22, 2004 - 21:02 : Dries I agree with Andre that the book module's integration with the menu system needs to be worked on. I support any effort that makes it easier to structure pages and that makes it easy to link pages/nodes from within a menu. However, I'm opposed to putting book module specific names in the menu system (eg. MENU_BOOK_MENU and MENU_BOOK_ITEM). I can imagine a handful of modules that want to maintain a menu tree (or part thereof) so I'm in favor of generic names. I'd have to read up on the menu system code, but last time I checked there was a MENU_MODIFIABLE_BY_ADMIN flag. You could choose not to set this flag for the menu items generated by the book module. Maybe it's already possible to implement to implement Andre's suggestion without having to modify/extend the menu system. Are you exploring this path? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 24, 2004 - 10:01 : andremolnar I've had a few spare hours to work on this. I've started to cobble together a solution - but in doing so I discovered a bug in the menu module (for which I will submit a seperate issue - if one doesn't already exist). The principal I suggested works. I added some code to the book module that creates custom menu's (MENU_CUSTOM_MENU with MENU_CUSTOM_ITEMs) for each Book that exists in a site. This is just as a proof of concept - I chose this menu type to start with because they automatically have a block created for them in admin/block (which is ultimatly the functionality we want). I ran a test and the menus are created as expected - the blocks are also created. But when I tested the menu blocks by enabling them I ran into a problem. It seems as though the menu system does not expand/explode sub menu items if the node type is book. I'm not sure why this is, and I haven't traced the source code yet - I thought I would ask if anyone has intimate knowledge of the menu system if they can point me in the right direction. No patch attached because until that problem is fixed this proposed change won't fly :( andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 24, 2004 - 11:11 : Dries Just a wild guess: maybe it doesn't work because the book module's URI scheme is not hierarchical? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 7, 2005 - 10:45 : andremolnar Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/book_module_1.patch (5.1 KB) I finally took some time out to do some work on this. As mentioned in a post to dev the problem I was having with menus not expanding/contracting properly was some crud in my database. Once that was cleared up my changes worked fine. I am attaching a patch for comments and for the brave willing to give it a test drive. History: This thread and http://drupal.org/node/15198 and http://drupal.org/node/15153 node/15198 has a patch that is required for this patch to work. What this does: Pretty straight forward. Any time a user adds/updates/deletes book or book pages (including via outline) - a function is called to create a new menu for each book. Any existing book menus are wiped out and then the new book menus are inserted - and the system menu is rebuilt to reflect the changes. The menus created consist of type MENU_MODULE_MENU and MENU_MODULE_ITEM. These menus show up in the menu/admin page so that admins can be aware of them, but the menu types are not editable via menu/admin (all changes are handled by the book module). Since the menus are in the menu table, the menu_block() hook handles the creation of the blocks for each of them. The blocks can then be administered in the usual ways via the block/admin interface. KNOWN ISSUE: (suggested solutions welcome) Since the menu table is updated on every change to books - the blocks associated with the menus are also recreated with default settings (i.e. disabled, and with no path or throttle settings) requiring a user to take an extra step and re-configure the book blocks for viewing on their site. I think this is unacceptable. For the casual user of the book module that only has a single book that doesn't change often, this would not be a big deal. But, if anyone wanted to make use of book module to handle dynamic site navigation this would create more work than it saves. Looking forward: If the block generation issue can be solved in a tidy way, this patch could allow users to use book to handle all their site navigation generation needs. Also, this patch could allow for the removal of a large chunk of code in the book module dedicated to building its own block via the block system. I left it there for now because I suppose there may be those out there that want to have book.module work the way book.module always worked (only show the book block when viewing a book page). Even so, since each book would have its own block, an admin could specify when and where the block shows via admin/block. I would appreciate feedback. If nothing else I hope this gives someone some new ideas. I'll continue to work on the block regeneration issue. andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 7, 2005 - 10:47 : andremolnar Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/book_module_2.patch (4.98 KB) sorry - here's a patch with prefered line breaks. andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 7, 2005 - 16:47 : nysus Andre, I've been meaning to give this a throrough look when I get a chance. Hopefully this weekend. ---Steve ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 20, 2005 - 02:02 : andremolnar Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/book_module_3.patch (6.66 KB) Here is an updated patch. Same comments as followup 51 - except that the known issue has been resolved. This changes book module so that any action taken on a book, including adding new books or book pages will create a menu in the menu system for that book - and thus create blocks for those menus that can be administered in the usual ways. This is my first attempt at a major patch to core - comments are welcome I will be happy to update documentation once revisions to the code have been taken care of. andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 20, 2005 - 02:53 : andremolnar Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/book_module_4.patch (6.17 KB) Sorry - would be nice if I removed some debugging code - ;-) also previous patch also would have introduced a need for a change to the menu table that isn't required yet. This patch is a correct version andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 20, 2005 - 19:16 : Dries The menu is recreated every time a book page is updated. I believe this is unwanted behavior because it requires the book block to be reconfigured upon every update. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 20, 2005 - 19:32 : andremolnar The menu is indeed re-created with every book page edit - because if the book page title changes the menu needs to reflect this change. The book block re-configuration is not required by the user. The code stores this information and re-sets the block settings. I will see if I can test for 'title change' before forcing the re-build of the menu - It would save a bit of processing power. andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 20, 2005 - 20:21 : andremolnar Took another at this - and it turns out that I already have a check to see if title or weight change (rather - they already existed in the module and I used them). andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 24, 2005 - 02:22 : andremolnar Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/book_module_6.patch (7.42 KB) Feedback received indicated that the original block generation code in this module should be removed - since this patch hands block generation off to the menu and block system. This patch removes that code. BUT - It should be noted, that in order to have book blocks only show up on pages of node type book - an additional patch found at http://drupal.org/node/16074 is required. andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 24, 2005 - 18:36 : andremolnar Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/book_module_7.patch (7.43 KB) Yet another patch: Brings this patch in line with - http://drupal.org/node/16074 (i.e. the column name change in {block} table) andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 25, 2005 - 18:56 : andremolnar Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/book_module_8.patch (7.53 KB) And another minor patch to cover coding style and variable names. Just to bring everyone up to speed: 1) Each book and its children pages have a menu created for them (on any add, edit, delete to a book or book page). 2) Those book menus automatically have a block created for them via menu_block hook. 3) Block settings are preserved any time there is a change to a book that requires the menu and its associated block to be re-built. 4) book_block hook is removed because it is redundant. 5) With the addition of the configuration option in blocks to only show blocks on certain node types (see: http://drupal.org/node/16074) administrators have full control over when and where a book block shows up (including maintaining the status quo of only having book blocks show up on book pages). 6) This patch does require http://drupal.org/node/15198 andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 25, 2005 - 21:49 : Boris Mann +1!! Book-based automatic navigation for corporate/brochureware sites! Fantastic! Chris Messina, get in here and add a +1 to this. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 25, 2005 - 22:26 : Dries Boris, have you tested this patch extensively, or are you just giving this +1 based on what you've read? If you want to see this committed, take the time to review/test it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 26, 2005 - 05:45 : andremolnar Yes - please - testers are welcome. Nysus (aka Steve) has already agreed to give this a test drive when he had a spare moment. I hope for some feedback in the near future. But if you have a moment Borris I would appreciate it. OR - If someone would just like to demo this: http://s92258948.onlinehome.us/greenbeach/ UN: drupaldev PW: drupaldev Don't mind the mess - it is my test environment and there is a lot of junk data and settings floating around - but this patch is running there along with the additional block configuration settings. andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 31, 2005 - 19:12 : Boris Mann You got me, Dries... I have since spent time testing the module on andre's site, and it does everything I can foresee needing at this point, with no functional errors. This functionality alone will make creating standalone sites that are composed of mainly static pages very, very simple. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 3, 2005 - 08:58 : Dries The demo-site appears to be down. Bummer. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 3, 2005 - 22:59 : andremolnar Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/book_module_9.patch (7.58 KB) Sorry - demo site was down while database was being cleaned and latest CVS modules were being installed (general site maintenence for testing). The site is up now with a fresh database and install of Drupal CVS. UN drupaldev PW drupaldev (has access to manage blocks, books, and menus to see this patch in action) Attached is an updated patch to make use of db_rewrite_sql (instead of node_rewrite_sql). Also fixes a minor bug that appeared if you were creating the first book in the site. andre -- View: http://drupal.org/node/14120 Edit: http://drupal.org/project/comments/add/14120

1 0

[drupal-devel] [feature] Improve functionality of block generation for book module
by andremolnar 03 Feb '05

03 Feb '05

Project: Drupal Version: cvs Component: book.module Category: feature requests Priority: normal Assigned to: andremolnar Reported by: nysus Updated by: andremolnar Status: patch Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/book_module_9.patch (7.58 KB) Sorry - demo site was down while database was being cleaned and latest CVS modules were being installed (general site maintenence for testing). The site is up now with a fresh database and install of Drupal CVS. UN drupaldev PW drupaldev (has access to manage blocks, books, and menus to see this patch in action) Attached is an updated patch to make use of db_rewrite_sql (instead of node_rewrite_sql). Also fixes a minor bug that appeared if you were creating the first book in the site. andre andremolnar Previous comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 9, 2004 - 06:12 : nysus Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/book_19.patch (4.85 KB) Attached is a patch for the book module that does the following: 1) Allows book blocks to appear on any page at any time, not just when a node from the book is being viewed. 2) Allows multiple book blocks to appear on the same page. This functionality is achieved by the automatic creation of individual blocks for each book when the book is created. Simply enable the book's block to enjoy the benefits of 1 & 2 above. If the blocks are not enabled, the blocks will appear only when a node from that block is being viewed (the same way it works now). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 9, 2004 - 12:35 : andremolnar Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/book_19_1.patch (4.84 KB) +1 This is great. A good many people have asked for something like this, and I think its a nice solution. But in the end this isn't up to me. One minor error in the patch... + $result = db_query('SELECT n.title, b.block, b.nid FROM {book} b INNER JOIN {node} n on n.nid = b.nid WHERE b.parent = 0'); b.block is not a valid field in this query. this updated patch removes reference to it. andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 9, 2004 - 13:54 : nysus Glad you like it and thanks for fixing that up. It was left over from an older version of my patch. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 9, 2004 - 13:54 : andremolnar Steve, If I apply this patch, and I attempt to configure one of the newly created blocks. I noticed that for some reason the block.module is returning "true" at line 249 (of the block module)- and is creating a form for module-specific configuration. But all that shows up on the screen is the word "array". Can you trace this back to see why - and maybe update the patch. I can continue to test your changes - anything to help this patch make it into core. andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 9, 2004 - 15:29 : nysus Hmmm...probably because I tested my patch on my version of Drupal, version 4.5.1. I'm having no problems. Are you using a cvs version of Drupal to test. If so, I'll set up cvs on my site and track this down. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 9, 2004 - 18:53 : drumm See http://drupal.org/node/12347 for information on how the block system has been updated. When I saw that the elseif ($op == 'view') was taken out I knew immedaitely that there was something weird about this patch. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 9, 2004 - 18:58 : nysus OK, thanks for the tip. Sorry for the confusion. Still kind of new to making open source contributions and it's easy for me to overlook some obvious stuff like this. I'll fix this up when I get a chance. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 9, 2004 - 19:06 : Dries Please do, because this being a new feature, it has no chance getting committed to the DRUPAL-4-5 branch. The DRUPAL-4-5 branch is in bugfix-mode. New features go into CVS HEAD. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 9, 2004 - 22:32 : Dries There is quite a bit of duplicated code in the patch. Maybe it can be simplified (using a function)? Either way, it is a little weird. I haven't tried the path, and I'm not sure I understood the description. It's somewhat vague. Is the book module exporting multiple blocks that are nearly identical, yet have different display behavior? If so, why not add a simple block configuration setting to the original book block? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 10, 2004 - 02:51 : nysus Dries, Yes, there is some code that can be factored out and some general cleaning up that can be done. It was a little tricky to write so I left it kind of ragged around the edges until I'm sure there are no bugs. It has worked very well on 4.5.1 but I obviously need to update it to work with cvs. I'll be on that soon. As far as what it does: 1) For every new book that a user creates, a new block is associated with it. So if you create "Book A", "Book B", "Book C", you will get three new blocks visible on the block administration page called "Book A", "Book B", "Book C". The original "Book Navigation" block is still there, too. The functionality of the "Book Navigation" block is not affected at all by this patch. 2) If Book A's block is enabled, the block containing its menu will appear not only when a node within Book A is viewed, but at all times (unless the user suppresses it on certain pages with the "path" feature). When any node is that is NOT in Book A is viewed, Book A's menu still appears but it is fully collapsed. When a node that DOES belong to Book A is viewed, Book A's Book menu expands accordingly. 3) The user can also enable Book B & C's block, and have their menus appear in a block at all times as well. 4) If none of the book's blocks are enabled by the user, the module will behave just as it did without the patch. That is, when the "Book Navigation" block is enabled, the only time any book menu will appear is when a book node is being viewed. 5) It's important to note (and this was the tricky part to write) that if both the "Book Navigation" block is enabled and "Book A" is enabled, they will play nice with each other and not do nasty things like create the same book menu twice. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 10, 2004 - 05:51 : nysus Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/book_20.patch (5.37 KB) Andre, Attached is a new patch that will resolve the problem of the block-specific stuff showing on the block configuration form. Let me know if you spot any other bugs. If it looks good to you, I'll go to work making the code look leaner and prettier. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 10, 2004 - 07:26 : nysus Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/book_21.patch (4 KB) Dries, Andre: Here is a new and improved streamlined version of the patch. Have a look if you get a chance. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 10, 2004 - 08:11 : nysus Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/book_22.patch (4.15 KB) Found a bug in the last version that would cause the block to jump to a different location. I think this should do it. Everything appear to work well (famous last words). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 10, 2004 - 14:49 : andremolnar Steve: bugs appear to be gone, and I didn't run across any other errors. This is functioning exactly as described. everyone: I personally would encourage support for this functionality. Book is a powerful navigation building tool in a site, not only with its ability to move next and back through a hierarchy of pages - but also its ability to build the appropriate navigation block without further user intervention (unlike the admin features in the menu module or taxonomy). The most frequently cited complaint about the book module is its inflexibility when it comes to when and where the block shows up. I also frequently hear requests for the ability to show multiple book blocks at the same time. Up until now the best alternatives suggested required users to do a hack (e.g. build a custom block that calls such and such a hook). Most abandon their request at that point because its over their heads. With this patch all those requests are covered and more. Now all books can automatically have their own block and admins can easily decide when and where each of those individual blocks show up (left right, up down) and coupled with the new configuration features of the block module - its very easy for admins to decide on which individual pages a block will show up. I would be interested what other have to say about this feature. My only reservation (which is minor compared to the benefits of the functionality offered) is that there is no way to turn this functionality off. i.e. The default behaviour is to build individual blocks for each book. If there could be a way to toggle this feature on and off somewhere - it would be perfect. Still, AS IS - this is a major improvement and offers great flexibility to admins and site creators. andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 10, 2004 - 15:04 : Anonymous Andre, Thanks for the feedback on the usefulness of this module. Glad I could pitch in and help. I agree about the inability to turn the feature on/off and I was thinking about that myself. I think it could easily be accomplished by creating a checkbox in the "book navigation" block individual configuration's settings. Call it "Enable individual book blocks." When enabled, the individual book blocks will appear on the block administration menu. One question: Where would the state of this checkbox get saved? Has Drupal moved away from serializing data in the data base? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 10, 2004 - 18:36 : Dries I'm afraid that 'Enable individual book blocks.' is not descriptive/clear at all. Are you suggesting a setting to toggle between 'show block on all pages' and 'show block on book pages only'? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 10, 2004 - 19:45 : nysus Dries, No. Andre and I suggest a setting within the "Book Navigation" cofiguration page, that would toggle whether or not individual books appear on the list of all blocks on the block administration page. Hence the name 'Enable individual book navigation blocks.' The help text for this checkbox might read something like: "By default, a book's navigation block is visible only when a page from that book is being viewed. Check this box if you want more control over where and when an book's navigation block is visible. You will then be able to control the book's navigation block location and visibility settings on the "admin/block" page." Hope this makes it pretty clear. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 10, 2004 - 20:08 : Dries I understand what you are trying to do, but not how you are trying to do it, or how the setting is supposed to work. I guess I'll have to try it when a new patch lands. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 11, 2004 - 09:52 : nysus Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/book_23.patch (5.02 KB) Alright, fellas, I'm proud to unveil my crowning achievement in the open source development world (no big deal to most of you guys but pretty good for a hack like me). Thanks for all the input so far. It's been helpful. I've streamlined the heck out of it per Dries suggestion and I've created an option to turn this functionality on an off per Andre's suggestion. Does this look good to you guys? Anything else I have to fix or improve? Thanks. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 11, 2004 - 13:02 : Dries I tried the patch. It works great but to me, the 'Give books their own block' settings seems to be redundant. Why not export the current book navigation block, along with an additional block for each book? Looks a lot simpler to me. I think I spotted a bug: orphaned book pages (or possibly book pages that are unpublished) appear to be getting book navigation blocks. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 11, 2004 - 17:34 : nysus I'll see if I can fix the bug. Might be tricky. But I don't understand your recommendation to "export the current book navigation block, along with an additional block for each book". Can you expand on this thought? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 11, 2004 - 18:06 : nysus Dries, I am unable to duplicate the bug. I have three orphaned pages. I also tried unpublishing some pages. But as far as I can tell, the patch works as expected. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 11, 2004 - 19:00 : Dries If you can't reproduce the problem, chances are my node/book table is somewhat fubar. As for the configuration option. I suggest removing it and to always make these new blocks available on the /admin/block configuration screen. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 11, 2004 - 19:52 : moshe weitzman I am hoping that we maintain the option to keep the behavior where the appropriate book block only shows up when its book page viewed. this is a nice, tidy arrangement. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 11, 2004 - 20:03 : nysus Yes, if you don't enable any of the individual book blocks, the a book's block (i.e. navigation menu) will only appear when a page in a book is viewed. In other words, you have the option to have the book block act like this patch isn't even installed. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 11, 2004 - 20:54 : Dries I guess I'll have to try the patch again, because I don't understand why it works like this -- or at least, why it can't be made simpler. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 11, 2004 - 21:13 : nysus Can you be more specific? Why it works like what? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 11, 2004 - 21:24 : nysus Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/book_24.patch (4.1 KB) This patch reverses a change made in the last patch which required a user to enable individual book block before they could enable any individual book blocks. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 11, 2004 - 21:41 : andremolnar As I mentioned earlier I am *fine* with either version of this patch as long as it makes it to core. But, as I said earlier, I clearly think the preference for admins would be to have the option to enable or disable this functionality. BTW - if this does make it in, I would be happy to create a Handbook page that describes the new features - something like "how to build robust site navigation using the book module". (on or after December 17th). andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 12, 2004 - 12:11 : Anonymous I am not at all happy with these features. They are incosistant, confusing and should use exising methods and UIs. May main concern is the incosistancy: it is confusing, will require extra attention with each core code change, adds extra logic to the core, and is not re-useable. so here are my questions: 1) why do we not use the menu system and apis to build and adminster the trees? Saves code, does not add extra UIs, and gives users more power. 2) why do we need that extra showing logic? a book block should not get exeptional if clauses, it should use the existing path setting methods on block admin. extra logic is confusing for administrators (hey, i set the path so that the book-block should show up here, but it does not, why?) we should really not provide extra logic in the block hook, but should rather use default settings in block admin (the book could fill the bookblock sql cells with custom paths, for example) 3) we should avoid extra UIs. We already have far too much, and far too much different ones. Please rather improve the block admin, than add new separate interfaces. 4) why do book blocks need al these expeptions in the first place? If they are so exeptional, we could consider not using blocks, but something else, like in-line book layout (pages with the index etc) 5) why did you not choose for a general, standard, block gerneation API? that way modules, such as taxonomy, image gallery, weblinks, article, etc can reuse it and introduce block gernation. All that sayd, i like the idea of this functionality, but i fear for a great useability downfall if we start introducing all sorts of exeptions for all sorts of modules. Because now chances are very big that taxonomy, image gallery etc will need to introduce other UIs, other code, new methods and new documentation, if they too want some sort of better block handling. so a -1 from me. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 12, 2004 - 12:12 : Bèr Kessels ^^--- That was me (bèr kessels) forgot to log in..... ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 12, 2004 - 12:34 : nysus I'm not going to pretend I can argue if my patch does or does not fit well into Drupal's larger architecture. My motivation for writing it is that I had an immediate need to create an easy way to make it easy for users to create menus. I'll let others decide whether or not the patch has merit from the big picture perspective. But if it doesn't, why not just use it for its immediate benefits and then throw it away when something better comes along? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 12, 2004 - 13:01 : Dries My summary is this: +1 on the functionality, -1 on the implementation. The code itself is good, but the usability/integration is not. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 12, 2004 - 13:13 : nysus When you say "usability" is that from the user's perspective or the code maintainers? I'm guessing it's the latter but I'm unsure. What about the idea of using the patch until a more permanent solution comes along? Yes, it's much better to live in a home with indoor plumbing but why not use the outhouse while you wait for a toilet to get installed? Or are there other considerations I'm overlooking that would make this a bad idea? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 12, 2004 - 13:20 : Goba nysus it is just generally against the Drupal philosophy to add improperly implemented functionality until something better comes along. There even used to be ocassions in Drupal releases, when some functionality was removed (not fixed) for a release, because its implementation was not adequate. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 12, 2004 - 13:55 : Dries Usability for the user. The extra setting on the block configuration page is both confusing and awkward. I don't understand why things must be configured/enabled that way (see my and Ber's previous comments on this issue). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 12, 2004 - 14:03 : nysus Well, just for the record, I reversed that functionality per your suggestion and uploaded the patch. The indiviudal book blocks now appear automatically. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 13, 2004 - 13:56 : Bèr Kessels Hi, I am sure you can make not only simpler, but better usefull for admins and users. All you need to do is use the menus for this. i.e. make a menu entry for each book page. For each book make a menu on level 0, without a parent. that way they become a seoprate menu, each with an own block. it saves code, makes things more consistent, and most important, uses drupal functionality where it should. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 13, 2004 - 14:50 : nysus Ber, Are you suggesting that for every single book page that a menu item be created? That's really not practical. That was my main motivation for writing this patch: to make it easy to put links, not necessarily related to one another, into a block. Any more pages than 10 and the sheer tedium of the job would prevent anyone from ever doing that. The menu.module is great, but adding new menu items is far from quick and painless. I just added about 10 to my menu for different taxonomies on my site and it wasn't fun. Plus, if you do as you suggest, there is also the problem of the book showing up twice. It will be generated by the menu and then it will be generated again by the book module which is programmed to design a block. You'd have to put some logic in the book.module _block hook to try to anticipate if a user has enabled a book in the menu. That wouldn't be pretty code. I'm all for putting automatic generation of book navigation blocks as part of the menu module. It does make more sense to have it there. But it forces me to ask the question: "Then why do we currently have code in the book module that generates a menu? Shouldn't that belong in the menu.module, too?" ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 13, 2004 - 22:31 : killes(a)www.drop.org I think what Ber is trying to say is that you can write a contrib module that monitors the changes to the book table and creates menu items automatically. nodeapi is your friend. I would also prefer this solution. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 15, 2004 - 16:39 : Anonymous ""Then why do we currently have code in the book module that generates a menu? Shouldn't that belong in the menu.module, too?" " Because it's old code. It would be nice if book.module generated this block using its _menu hook, so that the admin would have a few options in terms of configuration. "Plus, if you do as you suggest, there is also the problem of the book showing up twice. It will be generated by the menu and then it will be generated again by the book module which is programmed to design a block. " No. The old code which manually builds a block in book.module would be removed. Book blocks would only be generated by the menu. This would also have the added benefit of allow the administrator to easily place a book in an appropriate spot in the menu tree, while still allowing the possibility of displaying it in a separate block. Because of menu caching, I don't expect a large performance hit for creating the menu items. "That was my main motivation for writing this patch: to make it easy to put links, not necessarily related to one another, into a block. " It sounds like instead of (mis)using book.module, your time would be better spent in a usability improvement to menu.module so it's easier to do this. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 16, 2004 - 06:55 : nysus Thanks for the feedback and input. I appreciate it. However, I would also appreciate if you took more care to avoid the condescending tone in your post: "It sounds like instead of (mis)using book.module, your time would be better spent in a usability improvement to menu.module so it's easier to do this. " It's really quite unnecessary and off-putting. Though it won't stop me from contributing to Drupal in the future, I'm sure others would be really turned off by such a patronizing comment and it could dissuade them. I'd like the Drupal community to be a welcoming and friendly place that will inspire people to contribute, not discourage them. Thanks. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 16, 2004 - 10:07 : Bèr Kessels nyesus, Please do not start /that/ discussion here. :) Drupal community is known fo being direct, maybe because of the big number of western-Europeans attending, maybe because of other reasons. No-one commented that you are wasting your time. But the commentor was telling you somthing likethis: "If you would follow the previous sugeestions, your added feature would be much better appreciated, and will probably work much better for you too". He/she was by no means telling you to stop your silly coding, or anything in that line. He/She only wanted to show you the obvious and better direction. We often deal with issues that add some feature, and a complete new UI, because the author does not like, or cannot use the existing UIs and features. This is nogt good, because if that same author would have spend his/her time on improving that existing functionality or UI (improving is not neccesarily the same as extending!!) that code and time would benefit all much better. Thats what the commentor tried to say. And so is it here: If you dislike the way the books handle the blocks, and if you do not want to use the menu, because you do not like its UI, then do not add another UI and more features, but rather merge these, and improve the parts (in the menu) you dislike. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 16, 2004 - 10:35 : Dries We can worry about the menu integration later. Let's focus on the new option's usability/interaction design first. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 16, 2004 - 14:51 : nysus I understand what the commenter was saying and like I said, I appreciate and understand it. I'm not upset and I'm not looking for an argument, I was just being direct as well. :) As part of the Drupal community (albeit a minor player), all I'm saying is that I would like to see folks not have a tin ear to the humanity in all of us. It will help make Drupal an even stronger community and attract even more talented developers. Human interaction is part of the development process. Whether we like it or not, we must cope and deal with it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 18, 2004 - 09:54 : Dries I thought some more about this and am starting to believe that integration with the menu system should take priority. Here are common cool scenario's: I want to create a separate navigation block for the 'Drupal handbook'. I want to add a menu item called 'handbook' to the user block. That is, I want the book navigation to be part of the existing user navigation block. I want to add a menu item called 'handbook' to the top-level navigation menu. How would that work from a user's point of view? What do I have to click and where to configure this? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 21, 2004 - 18:47 : andremolnar I was actually thinking about the same thing last night (must have been something in the arctic air). / 2. I want to add a menu item called 'handbook' to the user block. That is, I want the book navigation to be part of the existing user navigation block. 3. I want to add a menu item called 'handbook' to the top-level navigation menu. / This is already possible (to a certain extent) with the current Book.module and Menu.module - A 'Books' menu item is created in the user navigation by having the Book.module enabled. Menu.module allows you to enable/disable this menu item. Menu.module also allows you to re-name this menu item. But, this only helps if you only intend to have 1 book (or else the name 'Handbook' is misleading if the user finds more than 1 book listed). - so this isn't good enough (or is it). /1. I want to create a separate navigation block for the 'Drupal handbook'./ This is what I was trying to figure out. Not just this, but a different way to do what Nysus was attempting. i.e. create a menu block for each and every book that is created. There is a way to write code that would (re)build a 'custom menu' on every add/edit/update to a book page - or book outline update. Custom menu's automatically have a block created for them. But, this I think would be a misleading use of the 'custom' menu - as the menu would not be custom if they are a part of core. So, I would think that two new constants could be added to the menu.inc file - MENU_BOOK_MENU - and MENU_BOOK_ITEM - each would behave as custom menu's, but would be reserved for books. These menu types should NOT show up in the Menu.module administration - because the administration of the book_menu items would be done by administering the book itself (adding an item, removing an item, moving an item up/down in the hierarchy, assigning parents etc.). However, the blocks that the book_menus would create would show up in the block administration (so users could enable/disable each block - and decide where on the site they show up). The existing book block logic would be removed. So the logic would be: If a creates a book in the book administration page - the Book.module automatically creates a new MENU_BOOK_MENU Any time a user adds to or updates or delets a book page - the entire book menu is deleted and recreated based on the hierarchy defined by the book itself. The blocks for each book would show up in block administration. Any thoughts - I know that this doesn't exactly address points 1 and 2 - but it could act as a first step. Is this approach a bad idea? It would add special conditions for the proposed book menu's - but books would be a special case. Even if people don't like this solution, maybe it will give someone a better idea. I'd love to hear them. andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 21, 2004 - 22:55 : Boris Mann +1 to this andre I had promised to put down my thoughts on this matter, as it relates to 1) primary and secondary links and how they are managed and 2) auto-generation of primary/secondary navigation based on book outlines So, for 1), we currently have functional-but-not-very-usable plain textfields to manage primary and secondary links. I would like to see menu.module used to control all navigation links, whether it is the navigation block or primary/secondary links. What is needed: a) default system menus labelled "primary" and "secondary" which would store; this is where modules could insert navigation b) support for full URLs (e.g. http://myexternaldomain.com) instead of just path 2) if we got 1 working, and andre does his book menus, this could get taken care of automatically. Basically, for brochureware/business/etc. sites that have static content, you could have a root book as one of the primary navigation links, and then the secondary links are generated automatically. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 22, 2004 - 21:02 : Dries I agree with Andre that the book module's integration with the menu system needs to be worked on. I support any effort that makes it easier to structure pages and that makes it easy to link pages/nodes from within a menu. However, I'm opposed to putting book module specific names in the menu system (eg. MENU_BOOK_MENU and MENU_BOOK_ITEM). I can imagine a handful of modules that want to maintain a menu tree (or part thereof) so I'm in favor of generic names. I'd have to read up on the menu system code, but last time I checked there was a MENU_MODIFIABLE_BY_ADMIN flag. You could choose not to set this flag for the menu items generated by the book module. Maybe it's already possible to implement to implement Andre's suggestion without having to modify/extend the menu system. Are you exploring this path? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 24, 2004 - 10:01 : andremolnar I've had a few spare hours to work on this. I've started to cobble together a solution - but in doing so I discovered a bug in the menu module (for which I will submit a seperate issue - if one doesn't already exist). The principal I suggested works. I added some code to the book module that creates custom menu's (MENU_CUSTOM_MENU with MENU_CUSTOM_ITEMs) for each Book that exists in a site. This is just as a proof of concept - I chose this menu type to start with because they automatically have a block created for them in admin/block (which is ultimatly the functionality we want). I ran a test and the menus are created as expected - the blocks are also created. But when I tested the menu blocks by enabling them I ran into a problem. It seems as though the menu system does not expand/explode sub menu items if the node type is book. I'm not sure why this is, and I haven't traced the source code yet - I thought I would ask if anyone has intimate knowledge of the menu system if they can point me in the right direction. No patch attached because until that problem is fixed this proposed change won't fly :( andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 24, 2004 - 11:11 : Dries Just a wild guess: maybe it doesn't work because the book module's URI scheme is not hierarchical? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 7, 2005 - 10:45 : andremolnar Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/book_module_1.patch (5.1 KB) I finally took some time out to do some work on this. As mentioned in a post to dev the problem I was having with menus not expanding/contracting properly was some crud in my database. Once that was cleared up my changes worked fine. I am attaching a patch for comments and for the brave willing to give it a test drive. History: This thread and http://drupal.org/node/15198 and http://drupal.org/node/15153 node/15198 has a patch that is required for this patch to work. What this does: Pretty straight forward. Any time a user adds/updates/deletes book or book pages (including via outline) - a function is called to create a new menu for each book. Any existing book menus are wiped out and then the new book menus are inserted - and the system menu is rebuilt to reflect the changes. The menus created consist of type MENU_MODULE_MENU and MENU_MODULE_ITEM. These menus show up in the menu/admin page so that admins can be aware of them, but the menu types are not editable via menu/admin (all changes are handled by the book module). Since the menus are in the menu table, the menu_block() hook handles the creation of the blocks for each of them. The blocks can then be administered in the usual ways via the block/admin interface. KNOWN ISSUE: (suggested solutions welcome) Since the menu table is updated on every change to books - the blocks associated with the menus are also recreated with default settings (i.e. disabled, and with no path or throttle settings) requiring a user to take an extra step and re-configure the book blocks for viewing on their site. I think this is unacceptable. For the casual user of the book module that only has a single book that doesn't change often, this would not be a big deal. But, if anyone wanted to make use of book module to handle dynamic site navigation this would create more work than it saves. Looking forward: If the block generation issue can be solved in a tidy way, this patch could allow users to use book to handle all their site navigation generation needs. Also, this patch could allow for the removal of a large chunk of code in the book module dedicated to building its own block via the block system. I left it there for now because I suppose there may be those out there that want to have book.module work the way book.module always worked (only show the book block when viewing a book page). Even so, since each book would have its own block, an admin could specify when and where the block shows via admin/block. I would appreciate feedback. If nothing else I hope this gives someone some new ideas. I'll continue to work on the block regeneration issue. andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 7, 2005 - 10:47 : andremolnar Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/book_module_2.patch (4.98 KB) sorry - here's a patch with prefered line breaks. andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 7, 2005 - 16:47 : nysus Andre, I've been meaning to give this a throrough look when I get a chance. Hopefully this weekend. ---Steve ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 20, 2005 - 02:02 : andremolnar Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/book_module_3.patch (6.66 KB) Here is an updated patch. Same comments as followup 51 - except that the known issue has been resolved. This changes book module so that any action taken on a book, including adding new books or book pages will create a menu in the menu system for that book - and thus create blocks for those menus that can be administered in the usual ways. This is my first attempt at a major patch to core - comments are welcome I will be happy to update documentation once revisions to the code have been taken care of. andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 20, 2005 - 02:53 : andremolnar Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/book_module_4.patch (6.17 KB) Sorry - would be nice if I removed some debugging code - ;-) also previous patch also would have introduced a need for a change to the menu table that isn't required yet. This patch is a correct version andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 20, 2005 - 19:16 : Dries The menu is recreated every time a book page is updated. I believe this is unwanted behavior because it requires the book block to be reconfigured upon every update. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 20, 2005 - 19:32 : andremolnar The menu is indeed re-created with every book page edit - because if the book page title changes the menu needs to reflect this change. The book block re-configuration is not required by the user. The code stores this information and re-sets the block settings. I will see if I can test for 'title change' before forcing the re-build of the menu - It would save a bit of processing power. andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 20, 2005 - 20:21 : andremolnar Took another at this - and it turns out that I already have a check to see if title or weight change (rather - they already existed in the module and I used them). andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 24, 2005 - 02:22 : andremolnar Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/book_module_6.patch (7.42 KB) Feedback received indicated that the original block generation code in this module should be removed - since this patch hands block generation off to the menu and block system. This patch removes that code. BUT - It should be noted, that in order to have book blocks only show up on pages of node type book - an additional patch found at http://drupal.org/node/16074 is required. andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 24, 2005 - 18:36 : andremolnar Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/book_module_7.patch (7.43 KB) Yet another patch: Brings this patch in line with - http://drupal.org/node/16074 (i.e. the column name change in {block} table) andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 25, 2005 - 18:56 : andremolnar Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/book_module_8.patch (7.53 KB) And another minor patch to cover coding style and variable names. Just to bring everyone up to speed: 1) Each book and its children pages have a menu created for them (on any add, edit, delete to a book or book page). 2) Those book menus automatically have a block created for them via menu_block hook. 3) Block settings are preserved any time there is a change to a book that requires the menu and its associated block to be re-built. 4) book_block hook is removed because it is redundant. 5) With the addition of the configuration option in blocks to only show blocks on certain node types (see: http://drupal.org/node/16074) administrators have full control over when and where a book block shows up (including maintaining the status quo of only having book blocks show up on book pages). 6) This patch does require http://drupal.org/node/15198 andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 25, 2005 - 21:49 : Boris Mann +1!! Book-based automatic navigation for corporate/brochureware sites! Fantastic! Chris Messina, get in here and add a +1 to this. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 25, 2005 - 22:26 : Dries Boris, have you tested this patch extensively, or are you just giving this +1 based on what you've read? If you want to see this committed, take the time to review/test it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 26, 2005 - 05:45 : andremolnar Yes - please - testers are welcome. Nysus (aka Steve) has already agreed to give this a test drive when he had a spare moment. I hope for some feedback in the near future. But if you have a moment Borris I would appreciate it. OR - If someone would just like to demo this: http://s92258948.onlinehome.us/greenbeach/ UN: drupaldev PW: drupaldev Don't mind the mess - it is my test environment and there is a lot of junk data and settings floating around - but this patch is running there along with the additional block configuration settings. andre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 31, 2005 - 19:12 : Boris Mann You got me, Dries... I have since spent time testing the module on andre's site, and it does everything I can foresee needing at this point, with no functional errors. This functionality alone will make creating standalone sites that are composed of mainly static pages very, very simple. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 3, 2005 - 08:58 : Dries The demo-site appears to be down. Bummer. -- View: http://drupal.org/node/14120 Edit: http://drupal.org/project/comments/add/14120

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