Yes true, I was mistaken about the variables
being instatitated. But these values are initially loaded from the database by
the variable_init function, called in the drupal bootstrap process before
settings.php is loaded. Yes you can override these in settings.php, in
which case the database value doesn’t matter, but hey are still meant to
be site configuration values that do not change. As the settings.php file
indicates you don’t normally use this method, unless you’re rally
trying to something vhost specific. They are not intended to house global
variables that you intend to change during the page load. Variable_set
is designed to change the database given values and is functioning as
designed. It’s used by the admin pages to alter the site specific
values.
90% of all use cases are handled using
variable_get() to get the site specific configuration settings from the
database and loaded in cache. It’s only in weird multi-site
hosting cases that you would ever be overriding the values retrieved by
variable_get in settings.php. It is not the preferred method of handling
values that you expect to change during a page load or between page loads on a
site.
Conf_init() in my inspection of the source
code on drupal_api initializes conf to an array() not a string. Where do you
see this behavior?
Dave
From:
support-bounces@drupal.org [mailto:support-bounces@drupal.org] On Behalf Of Scott Matthews
Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2008
8:19 AM
To:
Subject: Re: [support] Issues with
initializing Variables on startup..
I don't believe you fully understood me.
First off, variable_get does NOT retrieve from the database. if
you look in the code it ONLY retrieves from that $conf variable that
variable_set stores the variable in when it sets to the database. If, as
you suggest David, it really should retrieve from the database then it is not
working as defined.
function variable_get($name, $default) {
global $conf;
return isset($conf[$name]) ? $conf[$name] : $default;
}
Second, according to the comments in the settings.php, you can
initially override any variables stored in the database in the settings.php
file by setting the same variable that variable_get and variable_set uses:
/**
* Variable overrides:
*
* To override specific entries in the 'variable' table for this
site,
* set them here. You usually don't need to use this feature. This
is
* useful in a configuration file for a vhost or directory, rather
than
* the default settings.php. Any configuration setting from the
'variable'
* table can be given a new value.
*
* Remove the leading hash signs to enable.
*
/# $conf =
array(
# 'site_name' => 'My Drupal site',
# 'theme_default' => 'minnelli',
# 'anonymous' => 'Visitor',
# );
Scott Matthews
Senior Developer
(w) 617-227-1855 x164
(m) 617-710-8430
(f) 617-224-5388
On Jan 29, 2008, at 11:04 AM, Metzler, David wrote:
Variable_get and variable_set are used to store system wide
settings that should persist in the database. They are never (to my
knowledge) instantiated as PHP variables. The caching structure is meant to
reduce the number of database hits involved in loading variables, and should
not generally be accessed directly. Multiple calls to variable_get should
leverage the cached variables as appropriate.
The variables in settings.php can be used, you can define your own
global variables there, but if you want them to persist between page loads you
need to do that yourself. IN your hooks you can reference these variables
after defining them as globals, but be careful with namespace collisions.
I usually create a global variable that has the same name as my module and
store everying inside it (as an associative array).
Finally session variables can be used and will persist in the
database for the duration of a session.
Hope that clarifies things. It sounds like drupal is behaving as designed
here.
Dave
From: support-bounces@drupal.org [mailto:support-bounces@drupal.org]
On Behalf Of Scott Matthews
Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2008
7:37 AM
To:
Cc: Ron Trevarrow
Subject: [support] Issues with
initializing Variables on startup..
I found what
Appears to be a bug (or two) with initializing variables in Drupal.
It is suggested
that you can uncomment and set initial variable values in settings.php with the
$conf array. In doing so, and not seeing my variables set when retrieving
using variable_get, I discovered that conf_init(), when called to initialize
the configure file path, it sets $conf to a string. I know that since it
initializes settings.php within the context it conceptually SHOULD reset it to
a variable, but it doesn't. I proved this by changing the variable array
name in settings.php, variable_get, variable_set, variable_init and conf_init
to $config_vars and the values I initialized in settings.php were reflected
when my application later retrieved them using variable_get.
This bug is
currently hindering the flexibility of an application that I'm writing that
will be deployed to different environments. I initially tried to set the
variables in the 'variable' table of the Database in order to retrieve them
with variable_get but that method only accesses the cached variables in $conf
(or in my case, $config_vars. Is this on purpose? I see that
variable_set will not only set the cached variable but will also set into the
database. This seems to be a bug as well to me. Can someone clarify
this for me?
Scott Matthews
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