March 2009 - Development - lists.drupal.org

Loading configuration using 'SERVER_NAME' as opposed to 'HTTP_HOST'
by Adam Cooper 17 Mar '09

17 Mar '09

Hello all, It's a (very) long time since I posted to this list. So please excuse me if I'm breaking etiquette. I'm attempting to set up a development environment that suits my way of working. Using a VMware virtual machine (that is as close a replica to my VPS as possible) I've set up an apache instance and am adding virtual hosts to it as I go. Up until now I've had no issue bring across my current sites. They all are single sites and so have been set up in the 'default' configuration. I can add an entry to my host machines hosts file (say 'sitename.dev') and everything works great. The problem now is that I have come across one of my multisite configurations. I figured I could just set the virtual host configuration to have ServerName as my site name (sitename) and then ServerAlias in the name I would be accessing it as (sitename.dev). Setting UseCanonicalName to 'on' would let me access the site as I would expect. Except, despite this setting SERVER_NAME to the value I expect (sitename) my drupal configuration refuses to load. I took a look in the bootstrap file and found that the configuration directory is loaded from HTTP_HOST. TL;DR. So my question is this, why does drupal load it's configuration using HTTP_HOST as opposed to SERVER_NAME? Surely SERVER_NAME would allow more flexibility and more direct control? Would a patch changing this have any chance of being looked at? Thanks Adam

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Best place to store user data
by Steve Yelvington 17 Mar '09

17 Mar '09

Awhile back I wrote a simple module to fetch my Facebook status line, using an open RSS feed, and make a block to display on my blog. The fetched data is stored in cache for a limited period. http://drupal.org/project/fbstatus I've received a number of requests to upgrade the module to support multi-user scenarios. In such a case, cache obviously isn't the right place to put the data. But since there should be no more than one Facebook account per user, it seemed that creating a table (as seen in the Twitter module) would be overkill. So I began looking at using profile fields (requiring profile.module) or the serialized user data. But I'm likely to move the updates into hook_cron, and I can imagine a large site having to step through the whole user base, looking for statuses needing updates. So now I'm back at a discrete table. Is my thinking right?

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grepping for relevant functions/lines
by Maggi Federico 16 Mar '09

16 Mar '09

Hello List, I am new to Drupal and new to this list. For research purposes, I am surveying code repositories of the top 10 web applications using a modified version of StatSVN. Basically, I need to track source changes, over releases, in terms of "Lines of Code (LOC) matching a certain regexp". The functions/lines I am interested in are those somehow involved in handling HTTP request/session/response parameters. Of course, I allow a certain roughness in the analysis. I am trying to build a list of such functions/lines. What would you suggest to include? What would you grep for if you want to estimate the functions that are, even indirectly, related to processing of HTTP requests/sessions/responses? Any input is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance. Cheers, -- Federico

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Drupal & Database layout
by Jay Liu 15 Mar '09

15 Mar '09

Hi All, I'd like to write to the drupal database using a Java-Hibernate mapping however, I can't find any database design documentation. I guess I just need to know what inserts into which tables when you create a front page posting. I'm not a php programmer so I don't have an idea how to go about browsing through the code. Thanks

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D7 contrib module development
by Marcel Partap 13 Mar '09

13 Mar '09

Hi fellow drupal devs, wanted to bring up a few points about module development for some time and i guess now that module development happens to be the hot topic of the day would be a good time.. While D6 is proving to be a great success and through contrib modules can be flexibly expanded to almost unlimited use case customizations, working with a whole bunch of modules on our site my experience is that quantity is not necessarily a good compensation for quality. Several problems just keep coming up: - modules spamming the watchdog table with E_ALL warnings - modules ignoring the style/documentation guide lines - applied insane programming(TM) techniques - undescriptive module names but by far the most serious one is - duplication (partial feature overlap with existing modules). There might be different perspectives on this but IMHO specifically for D7 this is not a good way to go. An example for this mess is the huge number of competing notification/subscription modules for D6 - each with a destinct feature set and of course incompatible to all others. While competition is a good thing, certainly having multiple similar D5 modules live on and slowly creep up the version ladder while fighting for the same 'market share' is hindering real progress (=feature innovation, code sanity and API excellence) more than it is promoting it. If we want D7 to become *THE* perfect open source CMS, maybe a change in the module development process can help guaranteeing a higher level of code quality. One possible option could be to go some steps towards the linux model, in which all patches have to be signed off by a small team of core developers. Drupal would not have to choose an official team of reviewers though - patches could be confirmed by a simple voting system, in combination with the already working automatic testing. The issue tracking system could be optimized for reviewing/auto testing/auto committing patches (more code centric). However the specific details: the point of that change would be to shift responsibility (=power) from individual module creators to the coding swarm of contributors. This would significantly lower the odds of b(rainde)ad code getting in and hopefully drastically cut down on duplication. Especially because of the to-be-expected great API changes in D7 and the resulting amount of code rewriting that has to be done, wouldn't it be a great point in time to get our act together and come up with a single bind-them-all notification framework? _One_ cleverly designed poll/decision extension? Merging/standardizing the various e-payment modules? Imho taking this direction in the long run will result in more coherent code and enable easier adaption to core API changes, also cutting down on user confusion - furthermore increasing overall D7 r0xorn3ss! What's your view on this? regards, marcel. -- "Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal." -- Henry Ford (1863-1947) Change the world! Vote: http://hfopi.org/vote-future

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"Accepted" status for issues
by Dmitri Gaskin 13 Mar '09

13 Mar '09

Hey Development, What about adding a "Accepted" status for issues, kind of in between "active" and "has a patch" - we recognize it's a bug, we're working to fix it, or we like this feature, we're going to implement it. What are your thoughts? Dmitri

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modify the "add comment" in links
by Aldo Martinez Selleras 13 Mar '09

13 Mar '09

how can i change the link title "Add comment" for Reply, but only for forum and blog posts?? must be with theme() ??? thanks in advanced -- ---------------------- Aldo Martinez Selleras Especialista en Telematica CITMATEL GND Camaguey Tel: 53 32 291661 Linux User #364356

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contrib categorisation
by robert crowther 13 Mar '09

13 Mar '09

Listen, if anyone wants to suggest a better thread title, please do so! Anyhow, the 'Duplicated Modules' thread has moved in this direction (one suggestion being that duplicate modules would be more easily avoided if modules were categorised more freely and finely) ...and the 'An Alternative to Common Thinking' thread has moved in this direction, as leaning towards natural selection (if I might draw that analogy without upsetting anyone. If I have, I do apologise, but I hope you understand the process I am trying to summon) ...whereas at the moment we have an exciting and spontaneous enthusiasm from the fertile ground of Drupal core. But it would be nice to move this part of the discussion aside, I feel? Hence the new subject line. Look, I simply glance at dev to keep tabs on things. But I do recall something about this being talked over before. So I'm sure there is discussion I am not party to. RE: Walt Daniels - I've never seen Tagadelic (told you I'm not current) but a quick look tells me you most certainly get my drift. SoundSnap has a number of features (many I like), - A rough overall vocabulary - Sub categories Terms. Don't know who provides these. - A tagging system Now I assume this is free-tagging by contributors. But it works very well. I use it all the time for cross checking. Whether these categorisations are actively checked for synonyms or not, I don't know. I assume that people think carefully about their tagging though, otherwise their contribution will not show. - A star rating system. Now I hardly ever use this, as I may want a 'spitfire takeoff', not a 'spitfire flyby' (if I looked up aircraft). But I might use... - Download count - List sorting I never use it. As with EBay, where I slam everything onto 'Ending Soonest' (though I do use 'Auctions' and 'Buy-it-now' tabs) - Comments Hardly ever use them, because... - Try before download and finally - Search box suggestions e.g. 'telephone' might suggest 'ring'/'booth'/'operator'. Don't know how SoundSnap regulate this, but the suggestions are clearly pertinent, even inspiring. Differences (between Soundsnap and Contrib) Soundsnap is actively vetted for content. Don't see how this changes the argument, but there you are. You can sum up a sound sample on one line. Actually, I don't see why you can't sum up a module on one line, but there you go... Similarities Errm, I think SoundSnap is Drupal. Just guessing, from the interface and all. The base information is probably on a similar scale to contrib. SoundSnap claim about 100,000 samples. Anyway, they achieve highly effective searching over a large base. I imagine, given their content, the searches are pulverising and fine grained... in short, very intensive. Further thoughts The current Drupal system provides SOME of this anyhow. The main missing bits seem to be, - A thumpingly big front end. - Some sub-classification on the front end. - Tagging. - A suggestive search. - Knowing which bits SoundSnap actively administer, and what that would cost in the Drupal contrib environment. And maybe - Encouraging people to produce one or two line distillations of module descriptions. I love the idea of a try-before-buy feature. The only analogy I can think of is to more actively encourage screenshots. This may work in an EBay fashion - you get no interest without that little picture in on the left... Right, and now I feel somewhat embarrassed that I'm not going to do this, ...well, not now anyhow... so, over to the list, Rob

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Duplicated modules
by Karoly Negyesi 12 Mar '09

12 Mar '09

Hi, OK all you wiseasses, now you pissed me off enough to bring these issues into wider public, so tell me what to do in these situations. 1) There is a Drupal module, older than my boots, gets a much needed rewrite by two guys. Comes a third one, and he is, of course, welcome to the party. There is a discussion of what we do and what we not to do. Come next day, said third guy does what we all three agreed not do. Following a debate, he packs his toys and starts a new project. Said third guy contributes heavily to Drupal project for extremely long but quality and quantity does not always correlate. 2) I hand off privatemsg to another maintainer. He wants to go in a direction which neither me nor someone else even higher in the Drupal hierarchy agrees with. We all three come to a happy conclusion and the new maintainer does not go there. Time passes, and another guy, notorious for starting a parallel project, does exactly the thing we agreed on not to do and despite he says it was just experiment with the new Drupal 6 code, the project lives on. NK PS. the project moderation queue would undo Drupal because people would take their not-accepted projects off site. php nuke follows. PS2. 'mob rule' applied to code does not work. Your precious drupalmodules.com which I opposed from day one is an excellent example. captcha rated #2 , cck and views not even in #10, give me a break, this is broken,.

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Re: [development] An alternative to common thinking in 5- > 6migration
by robert crowther 12 Mar '09

12 Mar '09

And after Earl, how about a voice from the small fry? I had an idea for a module. That was half a year ago now. I knew nothing about Drupal and PHP. I don't even know about how programming culture works. After a helpful comment on dev (so how about being kind to frustrated people who stumble onto here?) I got going. My module is low profile because I want it to be. It's not ready for the big time. It is proof of concept. I try to make it clear to anyone who stumbles onto the work just what it can and can not do. This story works both ways, I guess. I'm exactly the kind of person some people would like to clear out. And other people would like to encourage, in the hope that 1 in 9 of the efforts might hit something good. Following David Meltzer yesterday, who sees a couple of basic arguments on separate threads.... I don't have time to read through all of this, There is another way of avoiding duplicates, besides review. If the cataloguing was good, you'd see the duplicates fast. And if cataloguing was good, you get minor efforts, such as my own, further down the pile. When I started my module, I searched Drupal modules and came up with 9 - 12 other modules, all in separate places. It took me hours. Not an adverse criticism folks, I'd rather contrib was big than small. And I'm another person who will not be applying myself to this right now (though there is a thought). Me, I'd rather make suggestions http://www.soundsnap.com/ Now that is a search facility I like. Rob

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