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

[Gabor Hojtsy]

A follow up to this is an issue by dww: http://drupal.org/node/145164
Although he reaches the conclusion that we need a hook_variable() from 
another angle, the goal is the same after all. So people sympathizing / 
against the effort, please use that issue!

Gabor

Gabor Hojtsy wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> To be able to translate variables to multiple languages in Drupal 
> nicely, we would need a small conceptual change, which would benefit all 
> of the Drupal developers, so I am posting the call here in hopes we have 
> someone or a small group to pick this task up.
> 
> **We need a central place to define variable defaults**
> 
> Simple! Now whenever you need a variable, you do
> 
>   variable_get('my_fine_var', 'my_default_value');
> 
> The problem with this is that you need to repeat this multiple times, 
> and of course there is a chance you need to modify it later on, so you 
> need to find all places a variable is used. Not good. Remember the 
> changes from bluemarine to garland, we have been fixing theme_default 
> errors for days, finding out places where the variable was used...
> 
> So we need a central place to define variable defaults. For Drupal 6 
> this is enough now:
> 
>   hook_settings() {
>     return array(
>       'my_fine_var' => 'my_default_value',
>     );
>   }
> 
> Have fun with naming it hook_settings(), as far as I see, it is an 
> appropriate name, and not taken at the moment :) So Drupal can do a 
> module_invoke_all() on hook_settings() and collect defaults to all 
> variables from the modules defining them. It gets easier and shorter to 
> use variables:
> 
>   variable_get('my_fine_var');
> 
> We can either cache the default vars as returned by the callback in the 
> variable_get() function, or in the database among other variables, you 
> get the idea. It is important to have all variables defined in 
> hook_settings(), even if the default value is an empty string or array.
> 
> Don't care yet about how this fits into translatable variables, because 
> we can only follow up on that if this gets done. So someone please grab 
> this issue and run with it ;)
> 
> Gabor
>