February 2009 - Development - lists.drupal.org

Limited hierarchy generations in Book module
by Athanasios Velios 09 Feb '09

09 Feb '09

Hello, I am a little confused with the limitation of 9 generations in the hierarchies of book structure in D6. Such limitation did not exist in D5 and relevant discussions have taken place here: http://drupal.org/node/274270 http://drupal.org/node/236866 Personally I think it is not reasonable to assume that every drupal website will require less than 10 generations in a hierarchical structure and I would like to know what your opinions on this are. As far as I can see, there are two arguments for limiting the number of generations: 1) Hierarchies without limits can be built with the Taxonomy module. 2) Speed when building the menu. Arguments in reply: 1) Yes, taxonomy can be used. But then why are we given the option to build hierarchies with the book module as well? Why allow two different ways of doing the same thing especially when one of them is not quite right? The obvious reason is because taxonomy terms are not nodes and we want hierarchies of nodes - not vocabulary terms. But why only 9 generations of nodes and unlimited generations of terms? And yes, modules that can link terms and nodes do exist, but they are rather heavy and probably risky to use. Also, what happens to backwards compatibility for websites that already use the book module for far deeper hierarchies? How do they upgrade to drupal 6? Also, the choice of 9 as a limit is completely arbitrary. Why not 29 or 39? 2) Speed is a problem which is encountered in every aspect of the development. And the answer to it as was suggested in the discussions is often caching. Why isn't caching an option here? I do not think it is reasonable to reduce the functionality of a module because of this. I have also heard that a block with so many generations in a menu will not "look right". The answer to this is of course easy: a) Why do we assume that multiple generations of nodes will all require a menu entry? Maybe navigation is only required to top level children of the hierarchy. b) Why do we assume that a menu is always in the sidebar (or why do we assume that the sidebar is too narrow to fit it). I have more than one examples when the "menu" is the main content of a page? And this is a theming issue anyway. Also, my feeling is that the major changes in the Book module for 6 started when a decision was made to combine the code for the book module with the menu system. I appreciate that there is quite a lot of code in common between these two modules - and excuse my ignorance here - but isn't there common code for hierarchy building between the taxonomy and the book module? Or at least wasn't that the case in 5? And how come and the code for the taxonomy module is free of the 9 generations limitation? Why couldn't the book module share code with the taxonomy module when it comes to hierarchy handling so that this limitation is removed? And as a proposal, in the short term the 9 generations limitation needs to be lifted. In the long term, I think a reasonable option would be to merge the book module with the hierarchy functionality of the taxonomy module. How? By introducing a setting for vocabularies to force a one-to-one relationship with nodes. In other words, for a given vocabulary, allow only one node to be associated with one term. I have recently joined the mailing list to be able to bring this issue up, because I think it is a critical one. So forgive me if this has already been discussed and point me to the discussion if this is the case - I could not find anything helpful apart from these links. Also, forgive me if these ideas sound naive. It would be good to have it explained and published out there as other people share my confusion. All the best, natuk

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New "novice" issue tag
by Angela Byron 09 Feb '09

09 Feb '09

If you ever come across an issue and you think to yourself, "Gee, it sure would be nice to fix that, and it would probably only take me a couple of minutes..." then please *don't* fix it -- instead tag it with the issue tag "novice" so that it shows up at: http://drupal.org/patch/novice (all "novice" issues across all projects) and http://drupal.org/patch/novice/core (all Drupal core "novice" issues) Why? * There are lots of eager people out there who want to contribute more to Drupal and get started with patching, or with documentation, or whatever. But you point them at an issue queue with 5,000+ active issues and they get overwhelmed and don't know where to start. By specifically identifying "novice" issues, we give them a nice short- list of "low-hanging fruit" that they can use to get their feet wet. * If you already know how to patch, we could use your smarts elsewhere. Like, for example, mentoring the new contributors taking on these patches. :) If you find yourself with 15 minutes you don't know what else to do with, please find more novice patches rather than solving these. * New contributors are the perfect people to help us refine our documentation so that it makes more sense to other new contributors. So I'd love for there to be an army of folks in #drupal on-hand to help people tackling novice issues get past the initial bumps in the road, and helping to guide these folks toward doing documentation improvements. Those of you who've been on this list a long time might remember previous attempts at this with the "patchnewbie" user (http://lists.drupal.org/pipermail/development/2007-October/026945.html ), but this is a much more workable way to identify easier issues because anyone can add this tag. So, please do! I'll make a blog post in a week or two once we start getting this list fleshed out that will hopefully lead to some new faces in the queues. :) -Angie

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kudos for change in api.drupal.org
by Ivan Sergio Borgonovo 08 Feb '09

08 Feb '09

Nice job. Best thing is api comparison. It will make much easier to port. thanks -- Ivan Sergio Borgonovo http://www.webthatworks.it

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Development snapshot not updateing
by Dag Wieers 07 Feb '09

07 Feb '09

Hi, Can someone tell me why the tarball of my development snapshot of HEAD is not being updated at: http://drupal.org/project/warning I updated it a few time the past days, but the page still says 2009-Feb-05. Is there something I can do to reissue the tarball ? -- -- dag wieers, dag(a)wieers.com, http://dag.wieers.com/ -- [Any errors in spelling, tact or fact are transmission errors]

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SQLite and Drupal 7 -- how to earn a quick buck
by Karoly Negyesi 07 Feb '09

07 Feb '09

Hi, First there is a tremendous confusion about SQLite and PHP and drivers. What we need is NOT the sqlite extension NOR sqlite3 from PECL/PHP 5.3 What we DO need is PDO_SQLite. If we want to clean up the installer and make maintenance nicer, we must require this driver to be available. Once we did that we can re-use it for the registry tables provided I can make it so that it is able to rebuild itself from MySQL. I have put up the challenge to http://drupal4hu.com/node/177 months ago. I will present the contenders to Dries in Washington DC. If there are no contenders then I will present that. Speak now or forever hold your peace. Thanks NK

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Curl-based content generation
by Martin Stadler 07 Feb '09

07 Feb '09

Hi! I'm working on a small curl-based script to add content to a drupal-6 site. Logging-in (getting cookie etc) works fine but when I try to add content I get a validation error. I guess it's about security. Is it at all possible to do what I'm trying? Is there documention how these form tokens actually work and what is required? I couldn't find that in the formAPI docs. Here's the code: # login curl http://localhost/USA08/user \ -F 'name=Martin' \ -F 'pass=pass' \ -F 'form_id=user_login' \ -F 'op=Log in' \ --output /Users/martin/response.html \ -s \ -c /tmp/curl-cookies.txt \ -b /tmp/curl-cookies.txt # -> works: response.html says I'm logged-in # add page curl http://localhost/USA08/node/add/page \ -F 'title=xyz' \ -F 'teaser_include=1' \ -F 'body=abc' \ -F 'format=1' \ -F 'changed=' \ -F 'form_id=page_node_form' \ -F 'log=' \ -F 'comment=0' \ -F 'name=Martin' \ -F 'date=' \ -F 'status=1' \ -F 'op=Save' \ --output /Users/martin/response2.html \ -s \ -c /tmp/curl-cookies.txt \ -b /tmp/curl-cookies.txt # -> does not work: response2.html says 'Validation error, please try again. If this error persists, please contact the site administrator.' Regards, Martin

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Way to have one content type "inherit" from another
by Victor Kane 06 Feb '09

06 Feb '09

Hi all, Looking for some feedback on using CCK fields as a way of emulating object inheritance in Drupal. Pseudo-inheritance via CCK field re-use. I am developing Project Flow and Tracker, an agile-based project management system built for and by Drupal, and will be presenting it (and making it available) at DrupalCon DC. Using Drupal 6.x, I have a "core" content type, "Card" (based on the Kanban "visual card" display approach - http://www.infoq.com/articles/hiranabe-lean-agile-kanban) A Card is a User Story, but could also be a project, a release, an iteration, a task... any kind of token that could be put on a 3x5 card and stuck on the wall to reflect project status. In an object oriented environment, I would create class Card, and then extend it into the other classes. I could do that in PHP, of course, but I want users of the PFT to be able to create their own work tokens or easily modify existing ones via CCK. So, is there any reason why making Card a superclass content type, with a superset of defined CCK fields, and defining a subclass by creating a content type and then adding in already defined fields, wouldn't work? I know it would work, of course, but is there a performance, or other caveat I should look out for? Also, how will this tie in with the new Field API in Drupal 7? Thanks in advance for your feedback, Victor Kane http://awebfactory.com.ar

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phpbbforum module into drupal settings are not displaying fully
by Swatee Karpe 06 Feb '09

06 Feb '09

Hi all, I have one problem while installing phpbbforum into drupal as follow : (if possible give me the solutions ) I use drupal 6x and phpBB3 I install phpBB3 into drupal directory. and now i m trying to add phpforum module into drupal for integrating phpBB3 to my drupal site. But my problem is that when i enable the module and go to phpbbforum module settings it not display phpBBforum status options : it display only errors as follows : Error locating phpBB installation. Please fix your settings! Error locating . Please fix your settings! Unable to connect to the phpBB database. Please fix your settings! and next display phpBB location settings phpBB forum root path: [ 1 textbox here ] where we have to give Path to forum directory. Enter the full directory path where phpBB is installed. so please help me, how to solved following problem phpBBforum status options : it display only errors as follows : Error locating phpBB installation. Please fix your settings! Error locating . Please fix your settings! Unable to connect to the phpBB database. Please fix your settings! is any settings was wrong into my installation?? thx in adv. -- Regards Swatee Amit Karpe

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Re: [development] ahah, drupal_json, file_uploads....
by Darrel O'Pry 06 Feb '09

06 Feb '09

So I've ran into an interesting issue, and wanted to solicit feedback from people more involved with ahah/ajax development for drupal than I.... http://malsup.com/jquery/form/#code-samples -- see the file uploads tab and the information regarding json/javascript responses. The concrete issue I'm dealing with is the Add another item button for CCK... For Filefield if you've selected a file to upload and press the 'Add Another Item' button you get an error. You get this error because drupal_json sets the text/javascript header, and the iframe doesn't accept that... This issue can be solved easily just by having CCK's ahah handler simply print drupal_to_js instead of using drupal json. This however will not solve more systemic issues with people adding file uploads to other ajax handled forms. There are a couple solutions I can think of... 1) have ahah set the iframe option to true and use iframes, and add the textarea to drupal_json. 2) check the _SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT'] and decide which header to set whether to wrap output in a textarea 3) hack around it on a case by case basis I was hoping some of the more jquery ahah astute might have better suggestions for achieveing some kind of consistency. We should probably add $_GLOBAL['devel_shutdown'] = FALSE to drupal_json regardless... .darrel.

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Re: [development] Curl-based content generation
by Jimmy Berry 06 Feb '09

06 Feb '09

@Marco: If you used a the abstract browser and a script you could programmatically access any feature provided through Drupal's web interface from a script on a local machine. The script could login to the remote server and perform any action the user can. Using the core browser you only need to specify the values you would as a user...all the default values are already picked up and sent as a standard broswer does (ie. checkbox states, hidden values, etc). Having such a tool would allow you to programmatically perform numerous operations on any number of remote servers with a single command. I see a great use being the update script that would allow you to run it on any number of sites at once, instead of navigating to each manually. This method requires no additional setup or configuration of the server. Just run the script and it will act as though it were a standard user browsing the site. To create a node you would need something like this: $edit = array( 'title' => 'New node', 'body' => 'Some text' ); $browser->post('http://example.com/node/add/page', $edit, 'Submit'); You can see how simple it would be to perform just about any operation as it already deals with cookies and such. Jimmy

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