[development] authentication hooks - PLEASE HELP

[Sheryl (Permutations Software)]

I've read everything. Nothing speaks to these questions:

- Which hook functions are called when (and not just from within the Drupal
code, but from what user action)? I thought that hook_auth() might be called
when the user logged in (that was a wild guess), but I can't get Drupal to
call this function no matter what I do.

- Exactly how the returns of each function are used - in what other parts of
Drupal. Without knowing this, I don't know what's required. In particular
for hook_auth, but also for hook_info. When/how are the hook_info functions
used? By what part of Drupal? What might call these, and why?

- What values are set in the database to control authentication, and what
does each value mean? In particular, what is the meaning of the different
values for "status" in the user table?

- How can I echo values while the script is executing to I can debug my
modules???????????????

If I'm wrong and there the information I seek is somewhere to be found,
please post a link. A general comment that there is "lots of documentation"
does not help me.

Thank you.


-----Original Message-----
From: development-bounces at drupal.org [mailto:development-bounces at drupal.org]
On Behalf Of Earl Miles
Sent: Sunday, December 18, 2005 4:33 PM
To: development at drupal.org
Subject: Re: [development] authentication hooks - PLEASE HELP

Sheryl (Permutations Software) wrote:
> Putting output buffer statements into my theme seems to have solved the
> tracing problem, at least. At the top and bottom of the hook_page()
function
> in my PHP theme, I added these statements:
> 
> 	$output = eval('ob_start();');
> 	...
> 	$output .= eval('ob_end_flush();');
> 
> I still have many other problems, however. Drupal calls databases and
> functions at unpredictable times. I can't tell what's going on and there
is
> no documentation.

There is actually quite a bit of documentation; there's so much, in fact, it
can 
be hard to tell where to start. The handbook and drupaldocs.org both have a 
great deal of documentation on the Drupal architecture.