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[drupal-devel] Forms API conversion help
by Chris Johnson 15 Oct '05

15 Oct '05

I am in the process of trying to convert the ezmlm module to the new forms API. I am doing this so I can learn the forms API. I am one of the maintainers of the ezmlm module and it is a very, very simple module. Once I learn the forms API fairly well, I will be happy to help other people with their conversion efforts, write more documentation on the API and/or convert more modules. I just need to get it all clear in my head first. However, I'm having some problems converting a simple form in my module. I spent several hours reading all the latest documentation and working on it last night, and I've run into a few things where I am not clear on how it should work. If anyone is willing to give me some help, you can view the before and after code here: http://phpfi.com/82366 Questions: 1. Is the #action key in the first form[] element the right way to specify where to post the form? 2. What's the proper array element index where it says "WHAT_GOES_HERE" for a non-form item message that needs to be injected into the form at that point? Is #markup the right type? Seems like it is. 3. What's the correct #type for my hidden form element? 4. What's the correct form array secondary index for an array of checkboxes? In the old form API, one used names like 'my_checkbox_list][' in order to generate HTML like this: <input type="checkbox" name="edit[my_checkbox_list][]"> How is that done with the new API? Thanks, Chris Johnson 31 hours until I leave for Amsterdam! :-)

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[drupal-devel] Forms API conversion help
by Apartment Lines 15 Oct '05

15 Oct '05

chris, thanks for writing in about this. atm, i'm sort of the point person for forms API doc. it's a big task, but we're slowly making progress! first thing to note is that even though the form you're converting seems simple, there are a few tricky parts to it. so... 1. i'd specify the #action at the root of the form tree, like so: $form['#action'] = request_uri(); Also, the '#fieldset' attribute is making everything in the tree under $form['subscribe'] into a form group--is that what want? If your goal is to get those div tags in the right place, you can just place them at the right spot in the form tree using the #markup attribute. for this form that's how i'd handle it, and just scrap the entire ['subscribe'] layer of the form tree. 2. yep, #markup it is. WHAT_GOES_HERE? is where the name of the markup element goes. since this isn't getting passed to $_POST['edit'], you can name it whatever you like. remember $form['foo'] means that the value will be available under $_POST['edit']['foo'] 3. the easy answer is: '#type' => 'hidden'. the more complete answer is, depends... :) under the new forms API, the 'correct' way to submit a form is writing a form execute function (instead of the old $op/switch approach). if you do write a form execute function, then you want to use '#type' => 'value'. this has the nifty benefit that the hidden fields don't get output as HTML. forms magic! 4. you build those arrays like this now: (and i'm hacking out your ['subscribe'] layer as i mentioned above) $form[ezmlm_list]['#tree'] = TRUE; $form[ezmlm_list][trim($list_text)] = array('#type' => 'checkbox', '#title' => trim($list_text)); in this case, you don't need to declare #return_value explicitly, because form code already has this as a default for the checkbox form element, and i'm *pretty* sure the same applies to #default_value the big tricky part of this section of code is that you need to preserve that tree structure in $_POST['edit']. by default, the form code squashes it, meaning that $form[ezmlm_list][trim($list_text)] will appear in POST as $_POST['edit'][trim($list_text)]. oops, you lost the [ezmlm_list] layer... :) to preserve the full tree for that section of the form array, you need to set the tree attribute to TRUE, which is what i did in the above section of code. 5. for drupal_get_form, the first arg is the form_id for the form--it's a string and the convention so far has been to name the form based on the function that it's created in. so for this form, it would be: return drupal_get_form('_ezmlm_subscribe_form', $form); hope this helps :) and if anything still doesn't work, let's talk about it at drupalcon... chad Chris Wrote: I am in the process of trying to convert the ezmlm module to the new forms API. I am doing this so I can learn the forms API. I am one of the maintainers of the ezmlm module and it is a very, very simple module. Once I learn the forms API fairly well, I will be happy to help other people with their conversion efforts, write more documentation on the API and/or convert more modules. I just need to get it all clear in my head first. However, I'm having some problems converting a simple form in my module. I spent several hours reading all the latest documentation and working on it last night, and I've run into a few things where I am not clear on how it should work. If anyone is willing to give me some help, you can view the before and after code here: http://phpfi.com/82366 Questions: 1. Is the #action key in the first form[] element the right way to specify where to post the form? 2. What's the proper array element index where it says "WHAT_GOES_HERE" for a non-form item message that needs to be injected into the form at that point? Is #markup the right type? Seems like it is. 3. What's the correct #type for my hidden form element? 4. What's the correct form array secondary index for an array of checkboxes? In the old form API, one used names like 'my_checkbox_list][' in order to generate HTML like this: <input type="checkbox" name="edit[my_checkbox_list][]"> How is that done with the new API? Thanks, Chris Johnson 31 hours until I leave for Amsterdam! :-)

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RE: [drupal-devel] I do not care about PHP 5
by Boerland, Bert 14 Oct '05

14 Oct '05

-----Original Message----- From: drupal-devel-bounces(a)drupal.org > Perhaps we should report this as a concern to Rasmus or whomever. He will be at the DrupalCON and is willing to talk about issues like these.

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[drupal-devel] Allow annoymous users to log in on access denied
by Chris Cook 14 Oct '05

14 Oct '05

I would like to draw some more attention to this issue. All commenters appear to be in favor of it and there are several patches available. Perhaps Dries is waiting for additional support or review of the attached patches. It would wonderful to have this in 4.7. http://drupal.org/node/24050 Cheers, Chris

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[drupal-devel] Criticism of Drupal
by Khalid B 14 Oct '05

14 Oct '05

This guy is giving up on Drupal. Better respond to some of his concerns. Even if he leaves for good, others may read the responses. http://drupal.org/node/34007

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[drupal-devel] Release critical bugs for October 13, 2005
by drupal-devel＠drupal.org 13 Oct '05

13 Oct '05

/ bug reports <img src="misc/xml.png" alt="XML Feed" \> age: 3 days 1 hour url: http://drupal.org/node/33659 / bug reports email spam filtering does not "see" email addresses when they are NOT preceded by a word age: 38 weeks 5 days url: http://drupal.org/node/15654 / bug reports _form_get_error deleted; should have been moved to legacy.inc age: 7 min 20 sec url: http://drupal.org/node/33992 overzealous file_check_directory for file_directory_path age: 2 days 1 hour url: http://drupal.org/node/33771 Pictures (avatars) don't display age: 2 days 16 hours url: http://drupal.org/node/33699 Error 404 when i try to import .po file age: 4 days 9 hours url: http://drupal.org/node/33525 No checking/catching for unique database columns assigned: cyrific age: 4 days 22 hours url: http://drupal.org/node/33478 Multi-site configuration breaks when a port number is used in the uri age: 1 week 5 days url: http://drupal.org/node/32761 Trying to rule Drupal out from critical bug/problem, re: network connection age: 2 weeks 3 days url: http://drupal.org/node/32262 Bug in node_load call in statistics_node_tracker age: 2 weeks 6 days url: http://drupal.org/node/32040 Upload broken in IE age: 2 weeks 6 days url: http://drupal.org/node/31968 Comment options: broken. age: 3 weeks 3 days url: http://drupal.org/node/31641 Node update hooks are getting stale data and can't save. age: 3 weeks 5 days url: http://drupal.org/node/31495 When removing a revision, the associated files are not removed. age: 3 weeks 6 days url: http://drupal.org/node/31355 Delete filter format fails age: 4 weeks 6 days url: http://drupal.org/node/30781 logout fails age: 5 weeks 11 hours url: http://drupal.org/node/30676 Submit button needs double-press when menu options dropped-down age: 6 weeks 1 day url: http://drupal.org/node/30097 update.php is broken when drupal is installed in subdirectory age: 6 weeks 1 day url: http://drupal.org/node/30075 Drupal "forgets" some blocks... age: 6 weeks 6 days url: http://drupal.org/node/29733 system_settings_save() bypasses access_control age: 6 weeks 6 days url: http://drupal.org/node/29680 files table needs a "module" column age: 7 weeks 4 days url: http://drupal.org/node/29297 logo uploads still broken...? can't replace default logo with new drupal 4.6.3 tar ball? age: 7 weeks 6 days url: http://drupal.org/node/29221 Error when anonymous user creates content age: 8 weeks 1 day url: http://drupal.org/node/29032 Reset user mail variables. age: 8 weeks 3 days url: http://drupal.org/node/28868 Free Tagging broken on forums age: 9 weeks 1 day url: http://drupal.org/node/28607 js addLoadEvent not working. age: 10 weeks 4 days url: http://drupal.org/node/27884 Forum bug with drupal 462 age: 11 weeks 11 hours url: http://drupal.org/node/27663 enable MySQL client side for UTF8 age: 12 weeks 2 days url: http://drupal.org/node/26990 Drupal 4.6.2 Doesn't allow login (IIS 5.1, PHP 5.0.4) assigned: bigeye age: 12 weeks 6 days url: http://drupal.org/node/26780 postgresql autocomplete code age: 15 weeks 22 hours url: http://drupal.org/node/26027 Accidentally Deleting Forums Vocabulary in Categories Breaks Forums? age: 18 weeks 5 days url: http://drupal.org/node/24274 Getting term node counts fails without "Administer Nodes" permission age: 19 weeks 2 days url: http://drupal.org/node/24015 Mysql Password with special symbols assigned: zignit age: 23 weeks 4 days url: http://drupal.org/node/21719 4.6 aggregator showing/not interpreting HTML tags age: 27 weeks 5 days url: http://drupal.org/node/19874 User deleted - nodes still "crippled", NOT deleted! age: 29 weeks 6 days url: http://drupal.org/node/19098 New submit error, non-admin user, postgresql database assigned: adrian age: 31 weeks 2 days url: http://drupal.org/node/18552 user redirected to homepage when logging in age: 31 weeks 6 days url: http://drupal.org/node/18381 Cache should store BINARY data as a BLOB and not as text age: 35 weeks 2 days url: http://drupal.org/node/16998 Change to sesssion.inc violates UID database constraint age: 38 weeks 4 days url: http://drupal.org/node/15666 forum.module problem with postgresql v7.4.1 age: 39 weeks 3 days url: http://drupal.org/node/15411 PHP 5 gives error when session table has no session assigned: adschar age: 39 weeks 3 days url: http://drupal.org/node/15399 Argument NOT must be type boolean age: 47 weeks 3 days url: http://drupal.org/node/12950 Cache problem with Postgres assigned: Cvbge age: 1 year 6 weeks url: http://drupal.org/node/10407 user error: Duplicate entry assigned: Kjartan age: 1 year 44 weeks url: http://drupal.org/node/4428 / feature requests Filter the title to allow HTML comments age: 12 weeks 5 hours url: http://drupal.org/node/27205 No obvious way to tell which release a site is running assigned: Uwe Hermann age: 26 weeks 1 day url: http://drupal.org/node/20439 moving pages en masse age: 28 weeks 6 hours url: http://drupal.org/node/19754 Taxonomy module should use nodeapi 'load' age: 31 weeks 1 day url: http://drupal.org/node/18631 Auto PHP memory maximisation age: 33 weeks 3 days url: http://drupal.org/node/17663 Allow named anchors to work without specifying full path to node age: 1 year 46 weeks url: http://drupal.org/node/4213 / support requests displaying event start info in flexinode tabular view? age: 1 week 2 days url: http://drupal.org/node/33019 Event block missing content of many fields age: 3 weeks 4 days url: http://drupal.org/node/31532 / bug reports file size bug age: 17 weeks 6 days url: http://drupal.org/node/24728 / bug reports Search results give incorrect links age: 4 days 5 hours url: http://drupal.org/node/33539 Full screen slideshow in Gallery module is not working (erroring out on the wrong URL) age: 14 weeks 22 hours url: http://drupal.org/node/26479 Gallery error age: 24 weeks 3 days url: http://drupal.org/node/21290 / feature requests Goofy Forum UI age: 2 weeks 3 days url: http://drupal.org/node/32294 / bug reports No image on preview age: 2 days 15 hours url: http://drupal.org/node/33701 image.module 4.6.0 strange actions age: 6 days 20 hours url: http://drupal.org/node/33292 File copy failed: source file does not exist error after running update-image.php age: 3 weeks 1 day url: http://drupal.org/node/31816 Path for image folder not inserted correctly when nodetype = image age: 6 weeks 2 days url: http://drupal.org/node/30031 image module patch & image_import module age: 7 weeks 3 days url: http://drupal.org/node/29377 image module fails on dual site configuration age: 13 weeks 19 hours url: http://drupal.org/node/26657 Image module thumbnail/preview stop working after l10n assigned: mfb age: 25 weeks 1 hour url: http://drupal.org/node/21036 Cannot upload .jpgs age: 32 weeks 3 days url: http://drupal.org/node/18076 / feature requests Image deletions? age: 5 weeks 1 day url: http://drupal.org/node/30557 / support requests Thumbnail path automatically changes assigned: thomasb age: 3 days 3 hours url: http://drupal.org/node/33644 Images are there but not showing assigned: Stepfordtwit age: 11 weeks 1 day url: http://drupal.org/node/27615 Image Module Permissions age: 14 weeks 4 days url: http://drupal.org/node/26280 / bug reports Prefix column error for SQL in Listhandler admin!! age: 1 week 2 days url: http://drupal.org/node/33017 / bug reports RSS "no element found at line 1" age: 14 weeks 6 days url: http://drupal.org/node/26185 Outdated help texts age: 1 year 10 weeks url: http://drupal.org/node/9692 Import doesn't like XML/RSS feeds with no Title element age: 1 year 19 weeks url: http://drupal.org/node/8128 / tasks move XML-parser into an inclde file. age: 16 weeks 2 days url: http://drupal.org/node/25439 / feature requests Notify.module ignores the true submission queue age: 1 year 50 weeks url: http://drupal.org/node/3765 / bug reports Login as an alias gets cached age: 3 weeks 2 days url: http://drupal.org/node/31699 / feature requests Internationalization support for PDF assigned: TheLibrarian age: 1 year 28 weeks url: http://drupal.org/node/6795 / feature requests Poormanscron should log to the cron section of logs. age: 6 days 4 hours url: http://drupal.org/node/33362 / bug reports privatemsg not working with current head age: 3 weeks 5 days url: http://drupal.org/node/31469 Reminder email links don't work age: 15 weeks 6 days url: http://drupal.org/node/25677 / bug reports can't select all projects age: 1 week 1 hour url: http://drupal.org/node/33262 Projects not listed and page not complete age: 19 weeks 2 days url: http://drupal.org/node/23956 Date for latest is incorrect age: 26 weeks 14 hours url: http://drupal.org/node/20485 / tasks Update to use Form API age: 2 days 6 hours url: http://drupal.org/node/33736 / bug reports Error with URL to recipe age: 6 weeks 4 days url: http://drupal.org/node/29885 / feature requests Request to generate email for all content changes/additions, including comments age: 12 weeks 5 days url: http://drupal.org/node/26824 / bug reports Does not work correctly in Internet Explorer age: 6 days 5 hours url: http://drupal.org/node/33354 javascrip downloads square.gif for every category age: 34 weeks 2 days url: http://drupal.org/node/17366 / support requests Taxonomy has dissapeared age: 1 week 1 day url: http://drupal.org/node/33061 / bug reports Sends trackbacks for unpublished nodes assigned: ankur age: 37 weeks 1 day url: http://drupal.org/node/16239

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[drupal-devel] Request for input on Quiz module data structure [long]
by Angie Byron 13 Oct '05

13 Oct '05

Hi, folks. Hope that this is the right place for this. Apologies in advance for the length, but I wanted to make sure everyone's on the same page before asking for feedback. == BACKGROUND == As most know, I worked over the summer on the Quiz module. Thanks to a generous injection of funding from Ejovi Nuwere at SecurityLab.net, I've been able to both complete most of the work that was not done by the other student assigned to this project during SoC, and am also able to now focus on adding additional features to the module. The quiz module was developed around Robert Douglass's specification (which I've temporarily mirrored here: http://drupaldev.snarkles.net/node/2) In a nutshell, this means rather than creating a simple module that could do multiple choice questions, instead creating a quiz *framework* which could potentially support almost limitless question types, from traditional multiple choice/fill in the blank, to really innovative ideas such as "reading" a question aloud to gage reading comprehension and so on. == HOW IT CURRENTLY WORKS == The current schema can be viewed here: http://cvs.drupal.org/viewcvs/drupal/contributions/modules/quiz/quiz.mysql?… For the more visually inclined, I've uploaded an E-R Diagram here: http://www.webchick.net/soc/quiz.module/quiz-schema-old.png This is based off the original proposal, where serialized arrays (/me ducks in advance) are used to store answer, feedback and user response data. NOTE: Skip to "THE PROBLEM" if you don't care about how this stuff is stored currently :P A typical result array (stored in quiz_results.results) might look like: Array ( [10] => Array ( [input] => Array ( [0] => 0 [1] => 2 [2] => 3 ) [feedback] => Array ( [0] => Correct! [1] => Correct! [2] => Correct! ) [score] => 1 ) [6] => Array ( [input] => Array ( [0] => 2 ) [feedback] => Array ( [0] => Nope, fooled you! ) [score] => 0 ) ... ) The array keys (10 and 6) are question node IDs... in other words, this is how the user responded to both question 10 and question 6. Over the course of the quiz, this array keeps growing, with one array of results per question. "input" is an array of the answer(s) that the user selected on that question. The first question was a multiple choice question, so the user plugged in three answers (answers 1, 3, and 4 -- remember that arrays start at 0 index). The second question was only a single-choice question, and the user selected answer 3. "feedback" is an array of the feedback to the answer(s) the user selected for input. As you can see, the user answered correctly on all three answers on the first question, but did not answer correctly on the second question. Finally, "score" is either a 1 (indicating the answer was correct) or a 0 (indicating the answer was not correct). == THE PROBLEM == The question was raised to me: "If there's a million questions, and a million students, and we want to find out for a given question, how many student got it right how do we do that?" Right now, the answer is something along the lines of this: ----------------------------------------------------------------------- function get_question_results($quiz_nid, $question_nid) { // Array to store question results $question_results = array( 'right' => 0, 'wrong' => 0 ); // Grab a list of the results array for each quiz attempt $quiz_results = array(); $results = db_query("SELECT r.results FROM {quiz_results} r WHERE r.quiz_nid = %d", $quiz_nid); while ($result = db_fetch_object($results)) { $quiz_results[] = unserialize($result->results); } // Now, loop through each result and look for the given question foreach ($quiz_results as $key => $value) { if ($value[$question_nid]) { // If question is found check if it was answered correctly or not if ($value[$question_nid]['score'] == 1) { $question_results['right']++; } else { $question_results['wrong']++; } } } return $question_results; } // Call the function and output results $results = get_question_results(12, 10); echo $results['right'] ." students answered this question right, " . $results['wrong'] ." answered it wrong."; ----------------------------------------------------------------------- This is quite processor and RAM-intensive, since it has to load ALL of the results for each attempt on a given quiz first, then parse through those to find individual question attempts, and then finally retrieve the answers from each and evaluate whether or not they were correct. And this same basic logic has to be completed for each potential query someone might want to throw at it.. Such as, "What is the average score of this user among all exams?" In short, it doesn't look like this solution is going to be very scalable in the long-term for the kind of ad-hoc querying that educators are likely going to really want to be able to do. == THE SOLUTION? == I've created an alternate, normalized data schema and wanted to get your feedback on it, if you get a chance. http://webchick.net/soc/quiz.module/newschema.sql E-R Diagram: http://webchick.net/soc/quiz.module/quiz-schema-new.sql Changes: - quiz/quiz_questions tables stay the same - multichoice turns into 'quiz_question' containing only a primary key and a "properties" field to take the place of "multiple_answers." I envision this field as being more flexible than multiple_answers, as it could potentially store a plethora of options for very diverse array question types, perhaps in the form of key/value pairs or something (multichoice=1;email_results=1; etc.) - answers are now broken out into a 'quiz_question_answer' table, which links back to quiz_question with separate fields for answer, feedback, and points. The answer field itself could store a wide variety of options, such as "Answer" for a multichoice question, "St. Paul|Saint Paul" for a fill-in-the-blank question, and so on. Since answer display is handled in each question type module in the _form and _render_question hooks, we can still have the advantage of storing data independently from the actual quiz module. Feedback, too, can be stored in whatever way makes sense for the answer, and points can indicate whether a question is incorrect (0 points) or can also be used for 'weighting' questions (answer 1 is 20 points, answer 2 is 50 points, etc.) - Results are now stored in two different tables: quiz_result for the overall properties (start time/end time, etc. -- essentially the same as the current table) and quiz_question_results which provides the textual representation of what that user put for his/her answer on each question attempt. This could be stored in a similar manner to the answers table... for multiple answer questions, it could be 23,63,3 to indicate the answer ids selected, for fill-in-the-blank it could have 'Minneapolis', etc. Each question type's _evaluate_question hook would take the data from the answer field and check it against the given question's answers. - Fields representing times and dates are switched to DATETIME instead of INTEGER (for UNIX timestamp) in order to help with date range calculation And if you made it through that, a hearty congratulations. :P Any thoughts?

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[drupal-devel] hard coded page sizes
by David Reed 13 Oct '05

13 Oct '05

I have a use to expose some of the admin type pages (logs, users etc) in a view with limited space available. I noticed that the page size is hard coded in all modules that use drupals paging mechanism. A quick glance reveals the following hard-coded pages sizes: watchdog = 50 lines user = 50 lines statistics = 30 lines comment = 50 lines poll = 50 lines I think it would be really usefull to provide a mechanism to override these hard-coded values. I would suggest something simple like apending a value to the url in the query string for page size. This value could be interogated by each module that calls theme_pager_link() to see if it should use it's hard-coded default or use an override. I'm more than happy to provide some patches for this but I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing a far easier way to solve this issue. Does anyone else see value in this? Is there a better way to do this other than patching the core modules?

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Re: [drupal-devel] Improvements abandoned?
by Richard Archer 13 Oct '05

13 Oct '05

Steve raises an issue that has really been bugging me this week. There are currently 260 or so patches in the Drupal issue tracker. Lots of these are worthy patches... like the two Steve mentioned. But so many of them have little or no chance of being reviewed and applied. There must be dozens of people beavering away making improvements to Drupal and submitting patches only to have them get lost in this ocean of issues. Such a waste of resources. Something needs to be done to address this issue. I have looked through the issues tracker reading the comments and following the progress over time of quite a few issues. It's actually quite sad to see a patch get written, reviewed, finalised and then not committed only to see the issue revived 6 months later, the patch gets updated, reviewed, approved and not committed. 6 months later the issue gets revived by someone else bitten by the same bug. What can we do about it? I would like to see ten or so issues at a time nominated as "hot" issues which are targetted, resolved and committed. I think that by focusing on just a few issues at once that these ones will get completed and all Drupal users will benefit from these incremental improvements. These need not be big patches or implementations of extensive new features. Small patches like Steve's help text improvements are just as worthy of inclusion as a new forms API - and a whole lot simpler :) There just needs to be some mechanism to focus resources on a small subset of patches so that they get reviewed, approved and committed. ...Richard.

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[drupal-devel] Patch files not appearing on site
by Steve Dondley 13 Oct '05

13 Oct '05

In case someone is not already on this... When viewing an issue post on Drupal.org, The links to the patch files are no longer visible for any issues. Example: http://drupal.org/node/33752 -- Dondley Communications http://www.dondleycommunications.com Communicate or Die: American Labor Unions and the Internet http://www.communicateordie.com

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