March 2005 - Development - lists.drupal.org

[drupal-devel] Drupal-devel Archives not updating?
by das1 04 Mar '05

04 Mar '05

I was just wondering why drupal-devel archives aren't updating as that is my preferred way to browse the lists. It used to update fairly often. --dave __________________________________ Celebrate Yahoo!'s 10th Birthday! Yahoo! Netrospective: 100 Moments of the Web http://birthday.yahoo.com/netrospective/

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

04 Mar '05

Issue status update for http://drupal.org/node/7582 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 Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/revisions_18.patch (52.31 KB) Updated once more. Moved log field from book to node_revisions table as discussed in Antwerp. upload module still missing. We need to decide under which circumstances the log field should be displayed. Should that be added to the workflow? Should it depend on the revisions setting? 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. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 4, 2005 - 00:56 : killes(a)www.drop.org @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. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 4, 2005 - 20:17 : dmjossel No results here on the query: select nid,type from node where type like '%/%'; On a database that was put in place prior to Drupal 4 and is now running on 4.5.2. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 4, 2005 - 21:44 : killes(a)www.drop.org @dmjossel: thanks. @all. The strange problem I reported was apparently php 5 related. After applying Steven's php 5 patch it went away. One error is remaining: If I create a new forum topic it will be shown as part of the book on preview. Hmm, that was due to a db that got corrupted during testing so that is fixed too. Please poke around at the test site and look if you find more errors. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 5, 2005 - 08:16 : Steven By the way, I just remembered that Drupal.org has some blogs lingering on in the database even though blog.module is not enabled. Perhaps this is causing troubles? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 5, 2005 - 12:22 : Anonymous I can't see why it would. Drupal.org will need extra updates for images and project nodes because those have their own tables. GK. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 6, 2005 - 13:49 : killes(a)www.drop.org Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/revisions_16.patch (52.49 KB) Updated to apply to cvs again. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 22, 2005 - 21:15 : killes(a)www.drop.org Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/revisions_17.patch (49.64 KB) Updated again. All we need is a patch to upload module and an upgrade path for it.

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[drupal-devel] [feature] Enable customizing of "Title" field on node forms
by Steven 04 Mar '05

04 Mar '05

Issue status update for http://drupal.org/node/10056 Project: Drupal Version: cvs Component: node system Category: feature requests Priority: normal Assigned to: Anonymous Reported by: Anonymous Updated by: Steven Status: patch nedjo: if you read the backlog you can see that this feature was delayed for after the 4.6 release. "I've customized the title field for only one of the node types, calling the title of a forum topic the "Subject". " This is really inconsistent, as what you call the title of a blog, story or forum node is purely subjective. "Subject" "Topic" and "Title" are pretty much interchageable and any subtle differences will surely be eroded by translation. The only thing I can agree on so far is naming a polls' title "Question". Steven Previous comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ August 14, 2004 - 19:17 : Anonymous Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/node.set-title-field.patch (2.02 KB) The default "title" field in a node object is useful but not always appropriate. For some node types it would be preferable to rename the field for display to users (e.g., from "title" to "name" for a record of an organization or business), while in others the title might be best drawn from a combination of other fields (e.g., first_name and last_name fields, for a record of an individual). This patch enables two new alternatives for node titles: renamingThe title field can be renamed, e.g., from "title" to "name". substutingOther fields can be substituted for the title field. The functionality is implemented through a new proposed node hook, _title_field($op). There are two possible values for $op: "action" (either "rename" or "substitute") and "names" (a list of field names to be used in the title field). Sample uses: <?php PHP function example_title_field($node, $op) { switch ($op) { case 'action': $return = 'rename'; break; case 'names': $return = array('Name'); } return $return; } ?> In this case, since the requested action is "rename", the title field would be labelled "Name" (instead of "Title") in node add and edit forms for nodes of type "example". <?php PHP function example_title_field($node, $op) { switch ($op) { case 'action': $return = 'substitute'; break; case 'names': $return = array('first_name', 'last_name'); } return $return; } ?> In this case, no "Title" field would be displayed in node add or node edit forms of node type "example". Instead, the fields "first_name" and "last_name" would be concatenated to form a title. Implementing this patch would significantly increase the flexibility of the node system, making it feasible to store information of many types not currently supported because they don't have a "title" attribute. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ August 15, 2004 - 17:39 : Dries This is best accomplished through the existing nodeapi hook, using a separate module. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ August 16, 2004 - 00:02 : nedjo Thanks for the suggestion. I did look for a way to accomplish this through _nodeapi (and other existing hooks), but couldn't see how. The "title" field is hard-coded into node.module. The _nodeapi hook allows various types of manipulations, but not, so far as I could see, changes to elements that have been generated by, e.g., form_textfield() calls. Are there possibilities I'm missing? Other approaches? Any specific suggestions as to means we could use to change the hard-coded "title" field? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ August 19, 2004 - 19:27 : nedjo Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/node.set-title-field_0.patch (741 bytes) Drawing on Dries's suggestion, I've substantially revised this patch to enable node title field customization with only three additional lines of code in node.module. In place of the existing line in function node_form() <?php $output .= form_textfield(t('Title'), 'title', $edit->title, 60, 128, NULL, NULL, TRUE); ?> the patch substitutes a the following: <?php $title = variable_get('node_titlefield_'. $edit->type, 'Title'); if(!($title == 'none')) { $output .= form_textfield(t($title), 'title', $edit->title, 60, 128, NULL, NULL, TRUE); } ?> With this change in place, node modules will be able to override the standard node title label by setting a variable, node_titlefield_nodetype, where nodetype is the type of node. This could be done, e.g., in a _settings hook, so that the first time settings were accessed the module would set the variable: <?php if (variable_get('node_titlefield_example', '') == '') { // since none is already set, set this variable variable_set('node_titlefield_example', 'Name'); drupal_set_message('Example module initialization completed.'); } ?> The special value 'none' would suppress the title field altogether in node forms, used as follows: <?php if (variable_get('node_titlefield_example', '') == '') { // since none is already set, set this variable variable_set('node_titlefield_example', 'none'); drupal_set_message('Example module initialization completed.'); } ?> In this case, a _validate hook would be used to set the title field value. Assuming a module where a first name-last name combination was to be used for a title: <?php function example_validate(&$node) { if(!(isset($node->title))) { $node->title = $node->first_name . ' ' . node->last_name; } } ?> In short, this three-line addition to the node.module would significantly increase the flexibility of the node system by removing the hard-coded 'Title' field in node add and edit forms and instead enabling custom labelling or concatenation of the field from other sources. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ August 19, 2004 - 19:50 : moshe weitzman I like this functionality. But the implementation still seems unclean. I would prefer to simply remove the 'title' form field from node_form() and require that modules present this field in whatever way they please. in some cases, they will use a hidden form field because no customer interaction is required. This causes a break with backward compatibility, but cleanliness is facored over compatibilityness (when you must choose). I'm moving this back to 'Active', since I don't think this patch is committable as is. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ August 28, 2004 - 00:46 : nedjo Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/node.set-title-field_1.patch (830 bytes) Thanks for looking at this. The suggestion - dropping the title field altogether and leaving this for module authors - has the advantage of simplicity. However, this change would imply significant new work as it would would require all or nearly all existing modules - core and contributed - be modified. While I think enabling title field customization is important for Drupal as a whole, and while this is a change I need for two modules I'm working on, I'm not immediately convinced that the benefits of this change justify this cost. Also, in most cases, the present title field works fine, so keeping it as a default option would I feel be desirable. Hence the following patch. In place of my (poorly conceived) initial hook proposals, above, this patch introduces a single very straightforward new node hook, _title_field. By setting this hook to return FALSE, node modules authors will suppress the default title field, and be free therefore to substitute what they wish or need. Returning TRUE, or not using the hook, will result in the default title field being used. Sample usage: <?php function example_title_field() { return FALSE; } ?> This is, I feel, a much better solution than the previous two I suggested--proof, if it's true, that the Drupal issue system works! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ September 6, 2004 - 16:50 : nedjo Are there any objections to or issues raised by this small patch (introducing a new hook to make the title field optional in node forms)? If not, can it be applied? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ September 7, 2004 - 14:46 : Anonymous I think I agree with Moshe's opinion that this should be accomplished by having node modules display the title field. In any event, this is a new feature and shouldn't go in during the feature freeze for 4.5. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ September 7, 2004 - 14:58 : ccourtne +1 for just moving the title field to be a responsibility of the implementing module instead of node_form. There is already to some extent "hook overload", in addition there may be several modules which don't want to even display a title module. Why add that only fixes some of the problems just to have to remove it later when you make a fix that address the whole problem. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ September 7, 2004 - 22:09 : nedjo Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/node.remove-title-field.patch (636 bytes) Thanks for comments. As per feedback, the attached patch removes the title field from node forms, leaving this instead to node modules. Understood that possible approval of this patch this will need to wait until code unfrozen. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ October 24, 2004 - 13:06 : moshe weitzman please patch all core node modules as well. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ November 28, 2004 - 02:00 : nedjo Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/node-move-form-title-field.patch (4.29 KB) Good point Moshe. This patch of node.module plus all core node modules simply moves the title field out of node.module and into the node modules, enabling (if desired) customization of the title field by a module. Patches to contributed modules will in most cases be as simple as adding the line <?php $output = form_textfield(t('Subject'), 'title', $node->title, 60, 128, NULL, NULL, TRUE); ?> at the beginning of a typename_form() function (and, if necessary changing an existing $output = to $output .=). In the attached patch, I've customized the title field for only one of the node types, calling the title of a forum topic the "Subject". We could consider calling the title of a blog a "Subject" or "Topic" as well. I feel this is a good solution (thanks for the feedback and discussion) and, for minimal work (minor updates to contributed modules), will have the significant benefit of enabling flexibility in content types beyond those that have "title" attributes. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ November 28, 2004 - 18:45 : nedjo Ability to customize title as provided in this patch was requested here [1]: "When adding/editing, the 'title' field is manditory, which is fine. Except that its label is hardcoded to 'title'. A custom node modelling, say, a 'Company' would much rather this field be presented to the user as 'Company Name'. " [1] http://drupal.org/node/13596 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 4, 2005 - 04:44 : nedjo Here's another patch that's sat for months without being either applied or turned down, although there was expressed support and, after several iterations, it addressed all issues that had been raised. The point is to remove the hard-coded "Title" field - inapprioriate for many node types, e.g., companies - from node forms, instead allowing node modules to treat this as appropriate (e.g., a "Subject", "Name" or "Topic", or nothing at all). Are there problems with this approach that were not raised? Is there a reason this wasn't accepted?

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[drupal-devel] [feature] Enable customizing of "Title" field on node forms
by nedjo 04 Mar '05

04 Mar '05

Issue status update for http://drupal.org/node/10056 Project: Drupal Version: cvs Component: node system Category: feature requests Priority: normal Assigned to: Anonymous Reported by: Anonymous Updated by: nedjo Status: patch Here's another patch that's sat for months without being either applied or turned down, although there was expressed support and, after several iterations, it addressed all issues that had been raised. The point is to remove the hard-coded "Title" field - inapprioriate for many node types, e.g., companies - from node forms, instead allowing node modules to treat this as appropriate (e.g., a "Subject", "Name" or "Topic", or nothing at all). Are there problems with this approach that were not raised? Is there a reason this wasn't accepted? nedjo Previous comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ August 14, 2004 - 14:17 : Anonymous Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/node.set-title-field.patch (2.02 KB) The default "title" field in a node object is useful but not always appropriate. For some node types it would be preferable to rename the field for display to users (e.g., from "title" to "name" for a record of an organization or business), while in others the title might be best drawn from a combination of other fields (e.g., first_name and last_name fields, for a record of an individual). This patch enables two new alternatives for node titles: renamingThe title field can be renamed, e.g., from "title" to "name". substutingOther fields can be substituted for the title field. The functionality is implemented through a new proposed node hook, _title_field($op). There are two possible values for $op: "action" (either "rename" or "substitute") and "names" (a list of field names to be used in the title field). Sample uses: <?php PHP function example_title_field($node, $op) { switch ($op) { case 'action': $return = 'rename'; break; case 'names': $return = array('Name'); } return $return; } ?> In this case, since the requested action is "rename", the title field would be labelled "Name" (instead of "Title") in node add and edit forms for nodes of type "example". <?php PHP function example_title_field($node, $op) { switch ($op) { case 'action': $return = 'substitute'; break; case 'names': $return = array('first_name', 'last_name'); } return $return; } ?> In this case, no "Title" field would be displayed in node add or node edit forms of node type "example". Instead, the fields "first_name" and "last_name" would be concatenated to form a title. Implementing this patch would significantly increase the flexibility of the node system, making it feasible to store information of many types not currently supported because they don't have a "title" attribute. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ August 15, 2004 - 12:39 : Dries This is best accomplished through the existing nodeapi hook, using a separate module. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ August 15, 2004 - 19:02 : nedjo Thanks for the suggestion. I did look for a way to accomplish this through _nodeapi (and other existing hooks), but couldn't see how. The "title" field is hard-coded into node.module. The _nodeapi hook allows various types of manipulations, but not, so far as I could see, changes to elements that have been generated by, e.g., form_textfield() calls. Are there possibilities I'm missing? Other approaches? Any specific suggestions as to means we could use to change the hard-coded "title" field? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ August 19, 2004 - 14:27 : nedjo Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/node.set-title-field_0.patch (741 bytes) Drawing on Dries's suggestion, I've substantially revised this patch to enable node title field customization with only three additional lines of code in node.module. In place of the existing line in function node_form() <?php $output .= form_textfield(t('Title'), 'title', $edit->title, 60, 128, NULL, NULL, TRUE); ?> the patch substitutes a the following: <?php $title = variable_get('node_titlefield_'. $edit->type, 'Title'); if(!($title == 'none')) { $output .= form_textfield(t($title), 'title', $edit->title, 60, 128, NULL, NULL, TRUE); } ?> With this change in place, node modules will be able to override the standard node title label by setting a variable, node_titlefield_nodetype, where nodetype is the type of node. This could be done, e.g., in a _settings hook, so that the first time settings were accessed the module would set the variable: <?php if (variable_get('node_titlefield_example', '') == '') { // since none is already set, set this variable variable_set('node_titlefield_example', 'Name'); drupal_set_message('Example module initialization completed.'); } ?> The special value 'none' would suppress the title field altogether in node forms, used as follows: <?php if (variable_get('node_titlefield_example', '') == '') { // since none is already set, set this variable variable_set('node_titlefield_example', 'none'); drupal_set_message('Example module initialization completed.'); } ?> In this case, a _validate hook would be used to set the title field value. Assuming a module where a first name-last name combination was to be used for a title: <?php function example_validate(&$node) { if(!(isset($node->title))) { $node->title = $node->first_name . ' ' . node->last_name; } } ?> In short, this three-line addition to the node.module would significantly increase the flexibility of the node system by removing the hard-coded 'Title' field in node add and edit forms and instead enabling custom labelling or concatenation of the field from other sources. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ August 19, 2004 - 14:50 : moshe weitzman I like this functionality. But the implementation still seems unclean. I would prefer to simply remove the 'title' form field from node_form() and require that modules present this field in whatever way they please. in some cases, they will use a hidden form field because no customer interaction is required. This causes a break with backward compatibility, but cleanliness is facored over compatibilityness (when you must choose). I'm moving this back to 'Active', since I don't think this patch is committable as is. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ August 27, 2004 - 19:46 : nedjo Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/node.set-title-field_1.patch (830 bytes) Thanks for looking at this. The suggestion - dropping the title field altogether and leaving this for module authors - has the advantage of simplicity. However, this change would imply significant new work as it would would require all or nearly all existing modules - core and contributed - be modified. While I think enabling title field customization is important for Drupal as a whole, and while this is a change I need for two modules I'm working on, I'm not immediately convinced that the benefits of this change justify this cost. Also, in most cases, the present title field works fine, so keeping it as a default option would I feel be desirable. Hence the following patch. In place of my (poorly conceived) initial hook proposals, above, this patch introduces a single very straightforward new node hook, _title_field. By setting this hook to return FALSE, node modules authors will suppress the default title field, and be free therefore to substitute what they wish or need. Returning TRUE, or not using the hook, will result in the default title field being used. Sample usage: <?php function example_title_field() { return FALSE; } ?> This is, I feel, a much better solution than the previous two I suggested--proof, if it's true, that the Drupal issue system works! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ September 6, 2004 - 11:50 : nedjo Are there any objections to or issues raised by this small patch (introducing a new hook to make the title field optional in node forms)? If not, can it be applied? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ September 7, 2004 - 09:46 : Anonymous I think I agree with Moshe's opinion that this should be accomplished by having node modules display the title field. In any event, this is a new feature and shouldn't go in during the feature freeze for 4.5. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ September 7, 2004 - 09:58 : ccourtne +1 for just moving the title field to be a responsibility of the implementing module instead of node_form. There is already to some extent "hook overload", in addition there may be several modules which don't want to even display a title module. Why add that only fixes some of the problems just to have to remove it later when you make a fix that address the whole problem. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ September 7, 2004 - 17:09 : nedjo Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/node.remove-title-field.patch (636 bytes) Thanks for comments. As per feedback, the attached patch removes the title field from node forms, leaving this instead to node modules. Understood that possible approval of this patch this will need to wait until code unfrozen. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ October 24, 2004 - 08:06 : moshe weitzman please patch all core node modules as well. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ November 27, 2004 - 21:00 : nedjo Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/node-move-form-title-field.patch (4.29 KB) Good point Moshe. This patch of node.module plus all core node modules simply moves the title field out of node.module and into the node modules, enabling (if desired) customization of the title field by a module. Patches to contributed modules will in most cases be as simple as adding the line <?php $output = form_textfield(t('Subject'), 'title', $node->title, 60, 128, NULL, NULL, TRUE); ?> at the beginning of a typename_form() function (and, if necessary changing an existing $output = to $output .=). In the attached patch, I've customized the title field for only one of the node types, calling the title of a forum topic the "Subject". We could consider calling the title of a blog a "Subject" or "Topic" as well. I feel this is a good solution (thanks for the feedback and discussion) and, for minimal work (minor updates to contributed modules), will have the significant benefit of enabling flexibility in content types beyond those that have "title" attributes. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ November 28, 2004 - 13:45 : nedjo Ability to customize title as provided in this patch was requested here [1]: "When adding/editing, the 'title' field is manditory, which is fine. Except that its label is hardcoded to 'title'. A custom node modelling, say, a 'Company' would much rather this field be presented to the user as 'Company Name'. " [1] http://drupal.org/node/13596

1 0

[drupal-devel] [bug] Node Default Options Ignored
by grohk 04 Mar '05

04 Mar '05

Issue status update for http://drupal.org/node/18226 Project: Drupal Version: cvs Component: node system Category: bug reports -Priority: normal +Priority: critical -Assigned to: Anonymous +Assigned to: grohk Reported by: grohk Updated by: grohk -Status: active +Status: patch Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/node_validate_type_fix.patch (627 bytes) With the help of chx [1] on the #drupal-support IRC channel, we seem to have found this bug. The first apperance of $edit in the node_validate function is: $node_options = variable_get('node_options_'. $edit->type, array('status', 'promote')); edit->type should be $node->type. A tested patch is attached. [1] http://drupal.org/user/9446/view grohk Previous comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 1, 2005 - 23:07 : grohk It appears to me that Nodes submitted by users without "Administer Nodes" permission are ignoring at least some of the node "Default Options" found on the node specific pages under "admin/node/configure/types". For instance for "Promote to Front Page" -- in my testing content that should not be promoted by default is being promoted anyway. I have tested with several node types including Blog, Page, and Image. This has been reproduced on a clean install of HEAD. Users who lack the permission "Administer Nodes" are affected.

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[drupal-devel] [feature] Unify confirmation messages
by Steven 03 Mar '05

03 Mar '05

Issue status update for http://drupal.org/node/18329 Project: Drupal Version: cvs Component: base system Category: feature requests Priority: normal Assigned to: Anonymous Reported by: Steven Updated by: Steven Status: patch Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/confirm_0.patch (28.55 KB) This patch creates a themable function theme_confirm() which is used to confirm actions everywhere across Drupal (mostly 'delete', but e.g. used for 'reset' in the menu system too). I also took the liberty of changing a bunch of messages to be more helpful in their wording. A plain message looks like this: http://acko.net/dumpx/confirm2.png (the red is from the theme) but some messages also display more info (e.g. mass delete of nodes shows a list of titles as well). The idea is taken from the Apple human interface guidelines: there is a large question, with some more explanation in smaller type below about what the effects might be of this action. The actions are not labeled "yes/no", but are verbs that mean something. This is much easier to end-users than trying to figure out what "Yes" is ("Are you sure you don't want to abort quitting the program and losing all your work?"). The 'cancel' item is a link rather than a button, because it does not perform an action, while the confirm button does. The menu admin especially got some improvements (to distinguish between menus and menu items in confirmation messages) while node deletion was changed to support drupal_goto and drupal_set_message. I discussed this patch with Chris Messina, he might do some more work on the display after 4.6, but in the meantime this patch is already a good usability and code improvement. Steven

2 2

[drupal-devel] [task] Remove use of form_item() in taxonomy
by drumm 03 Mar '05

03 Mar '05

Project: Drupal Version: cvs Component: taxonomy.module Category: tasks Priority: normal Assigned to: drumm Reported by: drumm Updated by: drumm Status: patch Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/taxonomy.module_3.diff (4.94 KB) form_item() isn't right in a few cases. Such as confirmation pages and things which should be using other form functions. There was a subtle difference between form_select() and whatever taxonomy was doing. Thats why there is extra code here. I tested it a bit too. drumm -- View: http://drupal.org/node/17955 Edit: http://drupal.org/project/comments/add/17955

4 8

[drupal-devel] [bug] Deleting feeds and categories leaves error-generating block
by drumm 03 Mar '05

03 Mar '05

Project: Drupal Version: cvs Component: aggregator.module Category: bug reports Priority: normal Assigned to: drumm Reported by: drumm Updated by: drumm Status: patch Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/aggregator.module_1.diff (2.72 KB) Make a feed with the block enabled. Delete the feed. The block remains and spews a database error on every page view. This fixes that. As for 4.5, the diff file at http://trac.civicspacelabs.com/cgi-bin/trac.cgi/changeset/273?format=diff might apply if the attached diff does not. The indentation is the only thing which might have changed in the section of code from 4.5 to CVS that I can see. drumm -- View: http://drupal.org/node/17160 Edit: http://drupal.org/project/comments/add/17160

3 3

[drupal-devel] [task] More granular number of foum topic in blocks
by drumm 03 Mar '05

03 Mar '05

Issue status update for http://drupal.org/node/18328 Project: Drupal Version: cvs Component: forum.module Category: tasks Priority: normal Assigned to: drumm Reported by: drumm Updated by: drumm Status: patch Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/forum.module_1.diff (2.88 KB) Currently the two forum topic blocks share a number of topics in block setting. This is a bit confusing since configuring one block should not affect another block. To finish this properly we should have a db update to copy the value of 'forum_block_num' to 'forum_block_num_0' and 'forum_block_num_1' and then delete 'forum_block_num'. Fixed some indentation as well. drumm

1 0

[drupal-devel] [bug] Expose encoding function
by killes 03 Mar '05

03 Mar '05

Issue status update for http://drupal.org/node/18319 Project: Drupal Version: cvs Component: base system Category: bug reports 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 Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/drupal-convert-to-utf-8.patch (2.11 KB) Drupal should have a function that takes care of converting foreign encodings to UTF-8. I refactored drupal_xml_parser_create to expose that part of its functionality to be reused by other modules. killes(a)www.drop.org

2 1