[development] Splitting hook_menu into hook_menu and hook_router

[Dries Buytaert]

On 18 Jan 2007, at 11:38, Karoly Negyesi wrote:

>>> With path being unique in one and not unique in the other ...
>>
>> Care to give a concrete example of where it goes wrong?
>
> It's not easy because currently you can not have this. But let's  
> suppose you want to have an 'About' page in your navigation block  
> and as a primary link to. You just can't do this currently as the  
> current menu and the hook_router both are keyed on path.

While I'm not opposed to the idea, I still fail to see the big win.   
Just because it provides logical separation or do you have a better  
reason?  I guess a key reason is that the implementation drives both  
features apart.

Still, I wonder why 5 people '+1'-ed the idea.  I really like to  
understand so hopefully these people will motivate their vote so  
other can understand their reasoning/insights.

Often times both functions go hand in hand: you'd need to implement  
one function to define the menu item, and one function to define the  
router.  They share or cooperate with regard to access control, plus,  
sometimes you want to force both being connected -- i.e. you want the  
menu/breadcrumb to adhere to the URL path or vice versa.  Isn't the  
trade-off that for 80% of the time, you need to learn two functions/ 
APIs instead of one to accomplish the same goal?

I still think it would be useful to take one or two examples and to  
provide a 'before' and 'after'.  Some practical examples will help us  
grok the problem at hand.

> I thought on what Adrian suggested, and here is what I was able to  
> create: We use
>
> $menu['navigation']['create content']['book page'] = array('title'  
> => t('Book page'), 'weight' => 5);

I like that because it is very intuitive.  Although it is not clear  
what the difference is between 'book page' (array key) and 'Book  
page' (array title) or what happens when I have different 'book  
page's at different positions in the menu tree?  Certainly an  
interesting idea though.

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