[development] authentication hooks - PLEASE HELP

[Earl Miles]

Sheryl (Permutations Software) wrote:
> 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.

Which and when are something of a moving target, but the given hooks are fairly 
reasonable at documenting when they are called.

For example hook_auth:
http://drupaldocs.org/api/head/function/hook_auth

> - 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?

Read the code?

> - 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?

You might look here http://drupaldocs.org/api/head/function/hook_auth and you 
might look for existing authentication modules and check their code.

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

There's the devel module in CVS (right now it's for 4.7 but if you look in the 
CVS history you can find one that's ok for 4.6). YOu can just 'print'. YOu can 
use 'drupal_set_message()'.

> 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.

Fair enough, but remember that this is an opensource project, and every single 
person who works on this project is volunteering their time and energy for 
absolutely no pay. Making demands of volunteers is less likely to lead to 
rewarding results than it will with a company who is interested in making a sale.