February 2009 - Development - lists.drupal.org

Is "SELECT * FROM ..." ok?
by augustin (beginner) 15 Feb '09

15 Feb '09

Hello, A while ago, someone (not me!) brought down our collocation server with a home made script which had many queries like this: SELECT * FROM ... I.e. the script was indiscriminately selecting everything from the table even though he might have needed only a few fields. This created heavy traffic between the SQL server and the web server which overwhelmed the platform. To be honest, I don't know the details (he might have been needlessly transferring whole images stored in the DB or something like this!) In Drupal 6.9, I count 120 occurrences of SELECT * FROM ... , not including SELECT COUNT(*) but including variations of SELECT n.*, pi.* FROM ... . Wouldn't it be a good idea to explicitly tell which fields are needed, in order to minimize traffic between SQL server and web server? The SQL coding standards say nothing about this: http://drupal.org/node/2497 Should SELECT * FROM be considered a kind of bug? Should this whole discussion be a 'won't fix' ? (why?) Or is this something worth considering in the issue queue? Blessings, Augustin.

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New project vocabularies
by Dries Buytaert 14 Feb '09

14 Feb '09

Hello all, in participation of the new project pages and navigation as envisioned by Mark Boulton (see [1] and [2]), we added two new vocabularies to the project pages on drupal.org. We decided to add these in preparation of the new design so that we'd have enough data by the time we launch the new drupal.org (and so we can do proper performance testing of the Solr integration). If you edit your project(s), you'll see the two new vocabularies that I'm talking about, and how they relate to the designs in [1] and [2]. [1] http://drupal.markboultondesign.com/iteration11/download.html [2] http://drupal.markboultondesign.com/iteration11/modules.html Thanks! -- Dries Buytaert :: http://buytaert.net/

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User Reference on Profile module
by Pedro Faria de Miranda Pinto 13 Feb '09

13 Feb '09

Today i need a user reference on profile but cck solution dont attend me so a build a patch to do it with profile module. If some one have interesting on it i can port to drupal 6 too. http://drupal.org/node/374098 thanks

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Body and teaser as fields
by Barry Jaspan 13 Feb '09

13 Feb '09

Now that Field API is in core it is time to start using it. I have an initial suggestion: change node body and teaser from special cases to normal fields. I suspect this is going to be quite controversial so I thought I'd get some feedback here before evening bothering to start looking at the code. This message is not about the details of the implementation; I'm sure there will be subtleties and complexities to work. I'm just asking about the concept. Concept: Remove all special processing for $node->body and $node->teaser. Create two fields, body and teaser, both text fields. Assign both fields to every existing content type with a "body field" using the textarea widget. For existing nodes, as part of the upgrade path, initialize the teaser field value with whatever teaser would normally be generated automatically from the body. Random thoughts: - We will get to remove a bunch of code, much of it quite ugly, from node.module. - Sites that really want an auto-generated teaser can remove the teaser field from a content type and use the text field's teaser Display Formatter in the teaser context. - This will mean removing the body field from the node and node_revision tables, and creating a field_data_body table for it instead. Don't worry about database query efficiency; that is a solved problem (see http://drupal.org/node/368674) - With $node->body and $node->teaser being normal fields, they will not be available for overloaded use as the complete rendered output of the node. Hurray! We can use $node->content = drupal_render($node) or something like that. - We might want to think about adding other fields to our default content types. Perhaps Article should have a Subtitle field, etc. This is a whole topic in itself. Comments? Thanks, Barry

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Drupal Trademark Policy Draft
by Dries Buytaert 13 Feb '09

13 Feb '09

Hello all, See http://groups.drupal.org/node/19068 if you're interested in Drupal's upcoming trademark policy. Please refrain from replying to this e-mail. Let's centralize all the feedback in the comments of http://groups.drupal.org/node/19068. Thanks! -- Dries Buytaert :: http://buytaert.net/

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custom style for content type
by Aldo Martinez Selleras 12 Feb '09

12 Feb '09

may i apply a custom style sheet to some content type, ex: forums, blogs ?? what i need to modify for this!? thks in advanced -- ---------------------- Aldo Martinez Selleras Especialista en Telematica CITMATEL GND Camaguey Tel: 53 32 291661 Linux User #364356

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CK-ERP (Open Source ERP / CRM / MRP) v.0.29.1 released (with Drupal 6.8 connector)
by C K Wu 12 Feb '09

12 Feb '09

Hi, folks, I have posted a new release, v.0.29.1, of CK-ERP, at SourceForge.Net, http://sourceforge.net/projects/ck-erp . New features include, new access control module, import of Zencart customer and product records, improved backup/restore process, CK-ERP is an open source accounting/MRP/ERP/CRM system that runs on top of multiple middlewares. It comprises 24 modules - Administration, Data Import, Access Control, i18n, Contact Management, Customer Relationship, Customer Self Service, Vendor Relationship, Ledger, Bank Reconciliation, MRP, Warehouse, Inventory, Service, AP, AR, PO, SO, Quotation, POS for Cashier, POS for Manager, HR, Staff Self Service and Payroll. It provides accounting and back office functionalities to SMEs and utilizes the underlying middleware to administer accounts/groups. Please report error and suggestion to the discussion group / mailing list, CK-ERP-en(at)googlegroups.com or CK-ERP-zh_CN(at)googlegroups.com . General history and expected development is available at the discussion group's Archive. Supported MiddleWares: Centre/SIS, ClaSS; OpenBiblio; CATS; php-residence, phpScheduleIT; AssetMan; Coppermine, Gallery2; phpMyTicket; phpMySport; PSCafePOS, MyHandyRestaurant; FreightFleetManagementSystem; OpenX, LandShop, Open-Realty, FreeRealty; IRM; LegalCase; ClearHealth, OpenEMR, Care2X; eGroupWare, Horde-GroupWare; Zencart, osCommerce; Drupal, Joomla, Mambo, e107, XOOPS, Xaraya; Moodle, Atutor; vTiger; WordPress, b2evolution; TikiWiki; phpBB. Information/Demo Websites: http://ck-erp.org http://ck-erp.net Download is available from, http://sourceforge.net/projects/ck-erp http://gforge.oss.org.cn/projects/ck-erp http://gro.clinux.org/projects/ck-ledger Cheers, Wu Chiu Kay, aka CK Wu, aka CK (CK is the preferred alias) Hong Kong

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File Security Module
by Jon Antoine 12 Feb '09

12 Feb '09

After installing Drupal many times and having to check file permissions to make sure the site was secure, I got to thinking about how to automate this process. I started by writing a script to take care of this, but eventually I thought a Drupal module might be the way to go. The module could provide a hook, say hook_file_security, that would take an array of files names and their suggested security parameters. This could work very similar to the updates module providing information on the admin/reports/status page and an admin/reports/file-security page that displayed all installed modules, their files, the suggested security settings, and the current security settings. Well, that is the base idea I had. I think something like this would really help new users of Drupal and I'm pretty sure it's possible since the installation script reports on the security settings of the files directory and the settings.php file. Any thoughts, ideas, suggestions are welcome. Cheers, Jon

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RFC: Module checksum module
by Olivier Jacquet 11 Feb '09

11 Feb '09

Hi, When developing with Drupal you often use contrib modules. When using contrib modules it happens that you find a bug or need it to behave differently than what was intended. So you modify the module. Now you have to have a method for knowing that this module is no longer the stock contrib module. I've seen different shops hande this in different ways but never really in a robust way. That's why I want to suggest the "module checksum" module. When you activate a module, the directory it is in is checksummed and the result stored. The module then allows you to rerun the checksum against all modules and shows for which modules the new checksum no longer matches. These are the modules that have been modified. With this list you can make sure you have the necessary patches before you upgrade said modules. I've briefly looked around and have not found anything like this. Is there? Any other suggestions or remarks? If not, I think I'll go ahead and make it. Best regards, Olivier

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Flex API, XML API modules are they needed?
by David Metzler 11 Feb '09

11 Feb '09

Hey all, I work for The Evergreen State College a small liberal arts college in Olympia, WA USA. We're using Drupal as a portal system connected to our student information system, and also as a community networking tool centered around governance activities. I also have a side job developing assessment analysis software (for public school systems) using flex, php and postgres. For the last two years + we've been developing home grown Flex applications that use REST XML web services, as well as drupal modules that consume the same web services. This has become the primary architecture for developing applications at our campus. For those who don't know me, I'm also the maintainer of the CAS (Single sign on for universities) and Form Defaults modules. I'm trying to decide whether to take the time to push out new modules associated with the way we do development, or whether people would rather just use existing frameworks. My question is, which if any of the following apis/modules might be of interest to the community? Here's a summary of what's been developed so far: Flex-api: A quick way to leverage FLEX applications in Drupal. The FLEX applications currently get embedded in a page, but we're thinking of extending this to blocks as well. The generated code tells the flex app what url it should use as a web service, so that it can get data. When the data service gets called it looks for a class file includes it an allows only methods of that class to be called. It also looks for an auth method to see if the flex app is allowed. Anyway, it's a nice way to bundle flex/flash applications with modules. XML Forms Binding: This api uses SimpleXML and php DOM apis to convert XML to drupal form_values style arrays so that you can basically get data from a web service and make a form using (tree=true) that will directly edit the XML that was passed to you provided you sprinkle a couple of functions in your form functions and submit handlers. Includes conversion API for converting nested arrays (like forms) into XML and back. XML-enabled DB Binding: Write sql binding syntax that looks like SELECT * from table where name={xpathtofield}. The XPATH entry can also be an index to a field array. I find this more intuitive than the %1, %2 ,etc syntax that's used in drupal, cause you can reference the same bind variable more than once in an SQL statement. Are these to specific to my way of doing development or are they drupal.org worthy. Really I'm ok either way, (got plenty of work to do) so don't feel like you need to encourage me if you aren't interested in using it. Dave

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