[development] Freezing the Drupal API

[Gerhard Killesreiter]

Bèr Kessels wrote:
> Op dinsdag 16 mei 2006 04:47, schreef Khalid B:
>   
>> Having said all that, the basics of FAPI (form handling) are not hard at
>> all to learn, specially for someone like you Ber. It is a mental barrier
>> more than anything
>> else.
>>     
>
> Oh I know! I was playing devils advocate more then anything else :), Ive had 
> my share of forms api, developed with it, was one of the first to find where 
> its limits lie (node forms w taxonomy cannot be altered properly) and I even 
> build a Fapi builder for KDE. 
>
> Having said that, stuff like form alter. Theming of forms and file forms is 
> not what I call fun to do. Not saying that it used to be better or simpler. 
> Just saying that this stuff has hardly improved. 
>
> But lets leave this issue in rest. Too much has been said about Fapi being 
> good or not. My point of view is clear. As is most of other peoples. I am not 
> a fan of working with it.
>   

The important point about fapi is the following[1]:

It lets you modify any form including validation and submit function.

This is a great step forward for Drupal, because it is now much more 
flexible and extensible. Which - btw - is an important point for me as a 
consultant in order to be able to "sell" Drupal. Just yesterday I had to 
make a modification to a module that I have developed for a client where 
he required me to check values on the profile field form for 
consistency. I was able to do that for the 4.7 version, but not for the 
4.6 version.

Sure, the code to do that doesn't look _really_ pretty and is a bit hard 
to grok, but at least it works and I don't have to patch a core file.

Cheers,
    Gerhard

[1] Of course the real reason for committing it that late was security.