Problem with Drupal Coding Standards?

If you are just starting to learn Drupal modules, and you are also new to PHP, it might be a good idea for you to brush up on Drupal Coding Standards. I know this sounds kind of boring, but it is a good practice. It is also very important if you intend to share your module with others in the future. This practice will make your code a lot easier to read for others who may wish to modify your module.

Drupal Coding Standards, as you might be able to guess, is basically similar to PHP coding standards. There are, however, some that are very specific to Drupal modules. The coding standards are explained here:

http://drupal.org/coding-standards

I will explain some of these listed above in detail.

Two spaces for indentation is implemented in Drupal standards. No white spaces should follow the end of the line. All line should end with a '\n' character. As opposed to '\r\n' for carriage return and line feed implemented widely in Windows system.

For all the $form[] = array(...); statements, you should format the lines so that it is easier to read. Following is an example from our Activity Manager module.

$form['activitytype'] = array(
'#type' => 'radios',
'#title' => t('Activity Type'),
'#required' => 'FALSE',
'#options' => array('Activity' => t('Activity'), 'Event' => t('Event')),
'#description' => t("Select type of event"),
'#default_value' => isset($node->activitytype) ? $node->activitytype : '',
'#weight' => -4
);

Notice that each element of the array is separated by a new line, while a comma is inserted right before the '\n' character. Also on the following line:

'#default_value' => isset($node->activitytype) ? $node->activitytype : '',

It is important to note that a space should be inserted before and after the '?' character (which denotes 'then'). This is also true for statements like:

$string = 'Hello' . 'World';

where a space should be inserted before and after the '.' which denotes concatenation.

For long lines that span beyond 80 characters should be formatted with new lines to make them easier to read. For instance in our Activity Manager module:

$additions = db_fetch_object(db_query('SELECT activitytitle, activitytype,'
. ' activitystartdate, activityduration, activitypublicationdate,'
. ' activityexpirationdate, activitykukuinuts, activitydescription,'
. ' activityverificationtype FROM {activity_manager} WHERE vid = %d',
$node->vid));

The code above is a good example of a line of code which could have easily gone beyond 80 characters. We managed to resolve this problem by ending the long string with a single quote, adding a new line and concatenating the next piece of line using the same method. The code provided above is a result of the repetition of the steps described here.

Drupal Coding Standards may seem a little annoying at first, but it is actually a good practice that everybody should follow if you are thinking about creating and sharing your own custom module. I would also suggest that you do this early. Learning about the coding standards after writing 2000 lines of code seems that it could be more than a annoyance.