[drupal-devel] menu system idea

[Dries Buytaert]

On 19 Jun 2005, at 10:26, Robert Douglass wrote:
> The nested arrays don't bother me. How much work would one have to  
> do in this direction before we would be able to 1) measure  
> performance and 2) rule out any "gottchas" that would make it less  
> attractive than it initially seems?

I agree.  We can't really tell it is an improvement until it has been  
tested.  I think it actually might fix a number of gottchas.   
Example: because modules get loaded in random order, a menu item's  
parent might only become available after the child has been loaded.   
Therefore, the current menu system first stores all menu items in a  
sequential array, and only builds the hierarchy of menu items after  
all modules have returned their menus.

The current menu system has two important drawbacks:
   1. it is slow -- we had to add menu caching, but even with caching  
it is slow.
   2. it is complex -- it tends to be difficult to make simple changes.

--
Dries Buytaert  ::  http://www.buytaert.net/