Web Development

Problems with Drupal 5 - database table sequences/counters

Submitted by on

A key design flaw in Drupal 5, especially for anyone dealing with large quantities of data, is that it doesn't use the database's built in auto-incrementing counters for its table primary keys, instead it manually tracks an per-table integer in a table called "sequences" which is updated each time new records are added. This is a bad design in all sorts of ways and really should have died a horrible death many years ago.

Tags: 

Bug in Drupal Panels v2.0rc1a to watch for

Submitted by on

There's a bug in Drupal module Panels v2.0rc1a which you may need to keep an eye out for. If you happen to be using the default_panel_minis() hook to programmatically load minipanels you won’t be able to edit or export the minipanel once it has been loaded:

The only way I’ve found to work with the minipanel from that point is to paste the exact same code from the default_panel_minis() hook into the importer. A bit of a bug, you might say.

Tags: 

I just love Drupal's architecture - export & API hooks

Submitted by on

While the architecture itself is improving with age, I just love that so many modules have followed Drupal's concepts and have added API hooks all over the place. For example, in the new Panels 2 you can export panels to files then set them up in a module with e.g. a default_panel_minis hook to have them automatically loaded. This allows you then to develop complex views and panels locally, push your module to the production server and have the new views and panels automatically show up - pure awesomeness!

Tags: 

Problems with Drupal 5 - clumsy record sorting

Submitted by on

More of a problem for administrators than site visitors, and definitely more of a nuisance than a real problem, it can be frustrating dealing with lists of records in Drupal 5, especially when you need to resort or reorder the list. A perfect example is using the Nodequeue module, one of the most popular modules which lets you create a queue of articles/nodes so you can e.g. manually create a list of top stories for the week; it's interface for managing the queue looks like this:

Tags: 

Pages

Subscribe to Web Development