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

[Gabor Hojtsy]

Dries Buytaert wrote:
> On 03 May 2007, at 21:43, Peter Wolanin wrote:
>> I don't think the suggestion below makes sense (setting variable
>> defaults via hook_install), at least if we assume that the way to
>> reset a module setting is to delete the corresponding variable.
> 
> Setting a variable on hook_install sounds clumsy, especially when we 
> have /dynamic/ variables of the form:
> 
>   variable_get($node->type ."_something", ...)
> 
> You simply don't know at install time, what variables might become 
> available later on ...

OK, then your constants tip (quoted below) does not stand, because 
/dynamic/ named variables will not be able to have defaults. (Unless you 
have a place to run define()-s with dynamic constant names, which would 
be a hook run on the beginning of all page views or something, which 
sounds quite scary).

So seems like /dynamic/ named variables rule out .install time variable 
saving into the database and rule out constants, what do we get to? A 
hook to retrieve variable defaults from? (evil grin)

 > How about this:
 >
 > define('site_name', 'example');
 >
 > function variable_get($name) {
 >   $value = db_result(db_query(...));
 >   return $value ? $value : constant($name);
 > }
 >
 > print variable_get('site_name');
 >
 > Might get us the best of both worlds? :)

Gabor