[development] Blocks and page context

[Earl Miles]

E.J. Zufelt wrote:
> Good evening,
>
> Thanks for this.
>
> I took a look at user_access() but wasn't sure that it would do what I 
> needed.  I have to admit to being a newbie as far as Drupal 
> development goes.  I normally work on cor accessibility.
>
> As far as user_access() I see that it can accept a user object, but 
> that it also needs me to pass a permission to check.  What permission 
> would I be checking to see if the current system path can be accessed? 
>  This is why menu_get_item() seemed more appropriate.  It would be 
> nice if there was a function like menu_get_item() that accepted the 
> user object like user_access() does.  Perhaps I'll ad an issue as a 
> feature request for d8 if this doesn't already exist in some hidden 
> corner of d6.

Context is a major weakness in Drupal right now and there is currently a 
lot of discussion on what to do about that in D8. As for what you can do 
right now, your global $user hack is probably the only thing you can 
actually do. it's not elegant at all, but in a contrib module...be very 
very careful you don't change the $user identity once you're done (so 
make sure all possible failure scenarios are covered).