Creating a Drupal Module

Creating a Drupal Module is not an easy task. In my last blog entry, I introduced a method in which to create a very simple Drupal Module. We are now doing something more complicated than a "simple Drupal Module", and I would have to say that initially, it was not a pleasant experience.

As I mentioned before, Drupal needs at least 3 files to run. The .info, install, and the .module files. While most of the important stuff is in the .module file, the three files are almost equally important. The .install file takes care of the database setup. It is basically run only once during the installation of the module. The .module file does almost everything else.

Drupal has an interesting way of handling custom modules. It does so by providing us with _hook functions which we are free to modify. At the same time, however, we are restricted only to modify these _hook functions. It is therefore, important that you first sit and learn what each of these _hook functions are for and how are you supposed to modify them.

Sometimes making more than a module to achieve a task becomes necessary in Drupal. For our case, we have developed an activity module, which handles the creation of activities. We also developed another module called signup that works together with the activity module to enable people to sign up for an activity.















There are also different types of modules in Drupal. The above example "activity manager" that we developed is a node module. As the name suggests, this module creates new nodes and interacts with the database fairly frequently.













The above image demonstrates how a user can fill out all the fields in Activity module to create a node. Each of the field above is a php form in the _form hook function. Once the user clicks on the submit button, the module sends the necessary data to the database to create your new node.














Here is how we made our Signup module. It essentially lists out the activity/events and provides a button for you to be able to signup for them. Unlike the activity module, this module does not produce any nodes. Once the user clicks on one of the sing up buttons, the module first retrieves the necessary information, user name, from the user and saves those information in its own table in the database. This way the module can keep in track of who is signed up for what activity. Also the module allows one person to sign up for more than an activity.