Issue status update for http://drupal.org/node/18260 Project: Drupal Version: cvs Component: base system Category: feature requests Priority: normal Assigned to: Anonymous Reported by: kbahey Updated by: kbahey -Status: active +Status: patch Setting status to patch, so we get it to the developers mailing list, and have a discussion going. kbahey Previous comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 2, 2005 - 10:23 : kbahey It is apparent that links returned by various modules need to often be changed to a different text, or disabled all together. For example, the issue of an Option to disable printer friendly version for book module [1], or for when using image.module to add product with image [2], or in let _link() return structured link info [3]. All these issues point for a desire to modify or disable various links in various modules. Crude Solution: One solution was to push this in every module out there, where each module would have options that would display or disable certain links. This is not the most elegant solution, since every module out there needs to change, and have options and more options. A Better Solution: A better approach is to allow the l() call to do a lookup in a table in the database (e.g. links). The links table would have module identifier, the original link text, and new link text. A user interface (mainly for the site admin) can provide a drop down list for all modules enabled, and allows overriding the text of the link, or disabling it altogether. Now when a module calls l(), it will lookup each link in the above table (or in the cache), and change them or disable them as appropriate. This would work with all modules, provided they do use the l() call, and not create the link by hand. Some potential issues: - More database access. However this is lessened somewhat by caching. - Ideally modules should have someway of answering a call to "list all links you have", and this can be used to populate the database when a module is enabled. This does not exist today, and I have no idea how feasible/easy/hard it is. Also, if modules are upgraded, how would Drupal know to update that table? By file timestamp for example which is kept? Please feel free to comment, refine, ...etc. [1] http://drupal.org/node/13211 [2] http://drupal.org/node/18249 [3] http://drupal.org/node/636