[development] Module Builder Module 1.0

[Larry Garfield]

On Tuesday 21 February 2006 07:26, Angie Byron wrote:
> At DrupalCon, a few of us had talked about how handy it would be to have a
> module that automatically generated "scaffolding" for modules, both to help
> new developers as well as to speed up the process of creating custom
> modules for Drupal veterans.
>
> As a result of a major bout of insomnia, I am pleased to announce that
> Module Builder Module 1.0 has been committed to CVS, and even pretty much
> works! ;) You can check it out at:

OK, I've not actually looked at it yet, so I can't comment on how 
good/late-night the code is, but my knee-jerk reaction is that I don't like 
code generation in the first place.  If the code is sufficiently boilerplate 
that it can be auto-generated, then it's sufficiently boilerplate that it 
should be written as a single routine and called with paramters.  That's the 
logic behind functions and variables. :-)

As a for-instance:

hook_load(), hook_insert(), and hook_update() are horribly redundant.  All 
three do the same thing in almost any node.  They select/insert/delete fields 
from a table, using almost the same code.  Sometimes there will be an extra 
table to manipulate, but there's still almost always a basic node++ table.  
And the fields have to be specified in all of them.  Ick!

The solution, however, isn't to have something that auto-generates those 
functions.  It's to let the module define the table and fields once and then 
let node.module handle the basic S-I-D.  Save those hooks for stuff that's 
actually interesting, and reduce the amount of code, too.  

I'm thinking something like:

nodename_fields() {
	return array('nodenametable' => array('field1', 'field2', 'field3'));
}

That would also allow node_load() to return an "empty node" of the correct 
type, which would help with E_ALL compliance.

(Yes, this is something I've been thinking about for some time, but have been 
holding back on actually trying to implement because I didn't want to 
introduce a change of that size when we've been "almost ready to get 4.7 out 
the door" since, uh, November.  Hi, Ber! <g>  I actually did something very 
similar to this at work, so I know it can be done.)

So yeah, code generation in general gets a -1 for me in favor of more powerful 
and generalized polymorphic code.

-- 
Larry Garfield			AIM: LOLG42
larry at garfieldtech.com		ICQ: 6817012

"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of 
exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, 
which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to 
himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession 
of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it."  -- Thomas 
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