[development] low hanging fruit for Drupal 6: variable defaults

[Gabor Hojtsy]

Wim, you said this is cool, because you don't need to check for an empty 
string, but you would set the default to an empty string for the 
settings form. So when the user saves the setting form, you get an empty 
string back from variable_get(), which would show you the error you 
skipped to check for because you use NULL as a default there. Once the 
user saves the setting, you can have any number of different default, 
you will always get the value the user saved.

Well, if you mangle with the variable after being submitted from the 
form, and before being saved (which you did not mention before), it 
means that you write more code where the form processing takes place 
(instead of reusing the built in Drupal settings form saver). That moves 
your code from one place to the other. And you will also need to code 
around the saving of the localized variables later once we have that 
included in Drupal.

I am fine with having this supported, in case this seems to be making 
your life easier, although I don't agree that this is easier then not 
mangling with variable values.

Gabor

Wim Leers wrote:
> I personally see this as a viable use case, yes. It saves me another 
> if-test. But my example wasn't quite accurate. Suppose you have a 
> multiple select form item. You set the default to -1 for the settings 
> page, and /then/ to NULL in your code. But probably you already figured 
> that yourself.
> 
> I don't see how exactly this breaks my code? It doesn't break anything, 
> it's pure convenience.
> 
> Wim
> 
> On May 3, 2007, at 11:57 , Gabor Hojtsy wrote:
> 
>> Wim Leers wrote:
>>> One use case is: on the settings page you set the default to a 
>>> certain value, for example an empty string. But elsewhere in your 
>>> code, you set the default to NULL, because then you can just do:
>>>     $var = variable_get('some_var', NULL);
>>>     foreach ($var as $key => $value) { ..}
>>> without having to check if $var is the empty string. Because using 
>>> NULL will immediately end the foreach loop and an empty string would 
>>> generate an error.
>>> Simple use case, but again a bit shorter!
>>> I'll do this one :)
>>
>> So you break your code once the user saves the settings page. Do you 
>> present this as a viable use case?
>>
>> Gabor
>