[development] hook_nodeapi vs. $form['#submit']

[Dave Cohen]

I'm building a site which has two custom node types with a one-to-many 
relationship.  That is, one type is a container for items of the second type.

When creating/editing container nodes, I want the form to allow the user to 
choose from nodes of the contained type.  Similarly when creating/editing the 
contained type the user may choose a container in which to place it.  I know 
about the node relativity module, but without going off on a tangent I don't 
think its appropriate for this case.

The way I see it, I have two ways to implement this.  Because I'm defining the 
two node types, I can put all the code I need into hook_form, hook_insert and 
hook_update.  That's the first option.

Another option is to not modify the modules defining the node types, and 
instead introduce another module which is aware of the two types and defines 
the relationship between them.  In this module I would use hook_form_alter to 
add what is needed in the edit forms and hook_nodeapi for the insert and 
update events.  I'm partial to using this second option, because in the end 
I'll have a nifty code snippet that I could use anytime I want to make one 
node type a collection of other node types.

So my question is, for the second option, do I really need hook_nodeapi?  
Wouldn't it be nice to use hook_form_alter to add fields to the forms, and 
define $form['#submit'] to call callbacks to handle inserts and updates?  
That way, my callbacks would only be called when necessary whereas 
hook_nodeapi gets called an aweful lot (every node load, for instance).

And my answer is yes, I really do need to define hook_nodeapi.  Because the 
$form['#submit'] callback does almost what I need, but not quite everything.  
In particular, when the submit callback is called during a node insert, there 
is no way to learn the new node's id.  And for my code the node id is 
necessary.

What do you think?  Would it make more sense to use the combination of 
hook_form_alter and $form['#submit'] callback, rather than hook_form_alter 
and hook_nodeapi?  Is there some way to get the inserted node id that I'm not 
aware of?  Should there be a way?

Thanks,

-Dave