Jeremy Epstein wrote:
In the Drupal handbook, there is a great resource called "Creating modules - a tutorial":
Needs to be updated in places (was written for 4.5), but despite this, it still does an excellent job of teaching you the basics of Drupal module development. Grokking the menu callback system, and its central role as the foundation of almost any page request in Drupal, is probably the biggest challenge for new developers. Also a challenge is getting your head around the "hook magic", and how all of that actually works, and then understanding a few of the more important hooks in detail (e.g. hook_block, hook_help, hook_nodeapi). This tutorial will help you to at least begin to overcome these challenges. :-)
Cheers, Jaza.
Thanks. That document was my first stop, even before posting here. It IS a good introduction. Unfortunately, I'm jumping in with both feet, and immediately had a need beyond what the tutorial covered. But it did help me get my initial shell in place, which is getting better as I learn tidbits in my journeys (like using the db_next_id() function instead of auto_increment fields). and you're right about understanding how the hooks work. For me it's more of a matter of figuring out which hooks to use when. Thanks again. Shawn