Seb's Drupal

What to choose

Localized taxonomy :

The term (and tid) between each language is the same.
The terms are localized by the means that drupal offer or the excellent translation table module .
The good point of it is it’s simplicity. One’s a localization have been written in a language, and that language has been activated, the localized term show up to the user.
The unicity of terms is also a simplification if one want to show nodes of this tid. whether they are fully translated or not. They simply show up in their translated form if it exist and in it’s origin form if not.

Difficulty to deal with international contributor
The bad point is how to deal with content entered in different language. If a french user create a content with the free taxonomy tag “bleu” which is being localized by an editor. And then another english user enter a term “blue” which is another term : the two posts will show on different pages. How to relation this two terms as the translation of term is not available in localization mode ?

From which language the terms are being localized from
They are localized from default language, the current default language. In translation table interface you see a column with the name of the default language. this column and localization is not use as long as this language continue to be default language. If it change, the localization you provide here could be used.
But the problem is that my strings could be entered in all the languages available and I want it to be translated in one way or the other.
Per aps the solution would be to have an intermediary language which serve only to enter data and from which all would be localized in all the languages.

Good points :
- content don’t need to have been translated to the language in which the term have been localized.
- When somebody create a new content, the terms to select form (if we use a select liste widget) will show up in the localized version. This is not the case as my test conclude with the translatable terms.

Translatable terms :

Synchronization of taxonomy terms thanks to isync taxonomy : The behavior of the terms that belong to a translatable vocabulary is odd. Whatever language is my default language, when I create a content the list of content is show in the original language.
The translation don’t occur if I do not translate the content in which the term is used.

It’s sad because It could be a more versatile and elegant solution. I’ll try to figure out why it’s behaving like this.

Internationalization in Drupal is a quite tough and hard subject.
But often things are simpler than one think.
Here is a serie of how to that I’ll write as long as I discover it :

1- How to have a drupal site in french and interface in english for the admin User

I’m french, but I like to have the Drupal admin Interface in french, because I’m used to this terms. And also because the adminsitration menu is ordered by alphabetical order, and thus all the terms are reordered when we change the language.
The task is thus not only to remember the terms, face bad or aproximative traduction but also to remember how this menu items are being placed in the current language.

So I needed this configuration and I’ve found how to set it up.

You define two language french and english. You set french as the default language. Default language should be in the language in which the site will be (if it’s a site with only one language).

You set the fallback negotiation to Path prefix with language fallback
And you verify that the language prefix have been set properly.
Then you set you user account to use the english language.
And if everything work fine, you should have all your url prefixed with en if it’s the prefix you’ve chosen, and your other user can have the site in french, as it’ll be their preferred language.

For a long long time I wander mysel how the hell I could install this so called simple install of php module.
I listen they use a sort of good stuff to install them that was named PECL.
The tuto I’ve found was complicated as they say that it was necessary to download the source, compile it, move it to its folder. …
A lot of time I’ve tried it and it fail.

And I’ve just found a new tuto that say just
sudo pecl install uploadprogress
to install uploadprogress and get rid of the related drupal message (link to file field or upload I suppose)
And this pecl script do all the stuff and at the end of the script say to add a simple line in the php.ini file

You should add “extension=uploadprogress.so” to php.ini
To found the php.ini file you should type
locate php.ini
and normally you’ve found it at /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini
You add the line at the end typing GG to go to the end of vim editor, and adding the line
after you need only to restart the web server with
/etc/init.d/apache2 restart
And the thing is done you’ve installed uploadprogress , xdebug or other cool php extension.

Features are great but very intimidating when things go wrong.
The bad thing is that when it’s wrong it’s not so wrong.

It’s just that the programm don’t show you the way to fix the problems.
So It occured to me en error 500 because of the dependencies that enable a module that could not be available in the sites/all/module directory.

Some tools to debug error 500 due to the activation of a feature

So you have a 500 error, a blank screen and no way to bring it back, drush don’t work because the bootstrap is interupted by the error.
First how to see the error or how to debug http 500 error put this lines at the very beginning  in your index.php of your drupal installation

ini_set("display_errors","1");
error_reporting(E_ALL);

Now you can see why the bootstrap is failing.
In my cases, it was one module, that was installed, but was calling a function of another module that wasn’t present in my module directory.

To desactivate the module without drush nor the ui, you can use phpmyadmin, and put 0 on the status column of the module’s row in the system table.
It works drupal don’t load that module more, and the request is no more interupted by this error.

You only need to make the condition, the error don’t appear again, in my case copying or downloading the module in the module directory.

The module feature direct save works, just check the permissions

The module feature direct save allow you to save a feature and update its version in the current site, without doing the tedious, download, upload process (I don’t understand why it’s not part of features it self. Though I had problem because it say to me that the save was sucessful despite, the files hadn’t changed at all. It took me a while to fogure out It was a permissions problem, there is no specific message telling that in fact it had a probleme saving. So give all the permission to write in the feature directory to your web server, and it’ll save.

Is it good to use feature to activate modules in a other site ?

It was a question I ask myself. Is it good to pack in a feature a lot of dependencies, to activate the modules in the site.

I’v partially answered. NO because, it’ll introduce dependencies between the feature module and the module, which mean that you couldn’t disable the module without disabling the whole dependencies.

Think of dependencies as true dependencie, which mean your features could not work without this module. If it doesn’t work without, It’s better for the feature to be dissbled.

If you want to pass a bunch of module to be installed in the new installation, make a list of them, using

drush sm | grep "installed"
and make a
drush en module1 module2 module3
to enable them.
These modules could be disabled later without disabling the feature.

Here are some learnings I’ve made with my experience with views :

1- Use the menu functionality included in view

You have two ways to define menu entry for a view.
First you define a path for your view in page settings and second you go to the menu interface and your define by hand the same path.

Recommanded
Second you define inside the view interface the menu entry.The advantage of such thechnique is that the menu entry will follow the change of the view path you can make. And this is usual in a project to change the paths.
You define the name of the entry menu in the view interface, and when you have defined some of your views, you can reorder the menu in the menu interface.

2- Define a link to add a new item in the header section of the view

You have a view of let’s say contacts of people, and you want to provide a link at the top of the view to add a new contact.
You can then define a header to this view, with the link. But if you don’t check on option in the header seetings that say “Display even if view has no result”
The header won’t appear if the view has no result.
You have other solution to define what the view show in this case of O result which is “empty text” settings, but this is mean to be what is shown in the main content area of the view and not in the header section.

Recommanded
Don’t forget to click on the “Display even if view has no result” option of the header section of your view.
Use the drupal l() function to make the link.
Use a destination that is the same path than your view if not after you’ve created your new content you will be redirected to the node full view page.
To do so you can read my post on the use of l() function
Put the input format of the header to php code and write something like this

  $options = array(
            'attributes' = array(),
                'query' => array(
                'destination' => 'contacts',
            ),
          );
  print l(t('Add a contact') , 'node/add/contact' , $options);

The page in the example is www.mysite.com/contact and the content type is of type contact.

3- Choose simple names for your view paths

The shorter the name of the path the better.
Also remember a path is used by the user a aditionnal clue to understand the sites’ structure.
In a lot of sites, we’ve got the pattern
Home page > Search > List of result > Content (full node)
A good way to name your path could be
mysite.com/contacts for the list of result
mysite.com/contact/the_name_of_the_contact

Note the s of contacts in the list of result, and the contact without s in the full node page.
It’s both logical, clear to understand and short.

4- Avoid to use view diplay

The view display functionality allow you to define a base view or default display, and to override it to make different display of type page, block, node content, view attachment….
This seems good but there is several drawback to use it that drove me to avoid it because of the following arguments :
- When a view is loaded it load also the other displays, and thus make the request longer that it should
- The override system in drupal 6 is not very clear, it’s not obvious in the interface what is overriden, and what is not
- When you override a setting in one of the displays you can’t say, let’s make this override the default, and apply to all other no overriden displays. You should note the setting and duplicate it in the default settings, and then click and default to un override your current display. This is not useful at all.
- You can’t clone a display but you can clone a view, when you want to make a display similar to another one, and you have overriden it a lot, you can’t say just make me another display with the same settings. This functionnality is only for a whole view.
- When you’ve got a lot of display, it’s very easy to mak mistake setting a wrong display
- When using feature, it’s easier to define a view as part of a functionnality of the site, and only the useful view with no garbage display
Recommanded
So don’t use display if possible but different views with appropriate tag and naming to search in the view list.

5- Find your view name quickly

View provide a direct link to access to its settings with a on hover link.
This is useful but when you finish editing the view, the destination settings send you back to the view page.
For a single tweek, it’s fine, but if you want to work on the view longer it’s better to stay on the page.
To do so remove manually from the url the destination part of if and type enter to reload the page.
You’re then in the view editing page without any destination, quicker way to find a view than to scroll in the very long view list.

I’am currently debugging a drupal site where the blocks don’t show where they should be.
Here are some more tricks I’ve discovered by the way.

How to know which variables are available in a template file

Juste use the simple get_defined_vars which come with php.
It return an array of variables name as key and value as value.
You can the add the following line to your templates files pages.tpl.php for example

$seb_def_var = get_defined_vars();
dsm ($seb_def_var, 'Print all defined variables');

I use thus the printing facility of dsm, as this array is a big array!

How to see sometings with dsm() even if it has no value

dsm is great tool to show array in a convenient way, but what if the array has no value. In
this case it’ll show a simple bullet list dot with no value, no means to know what is happening.

The dsm function accept a second argument, which is a string that detail the dsm being made.
So put a label there that will show up even if the variable being printed has no value. It’s a good way
to recall you where is supposed to be you dsm() print and allow you to further investigate.


dsm ($var, 'Put here a text that will print whatever the $var variable may contain');

How to connect to a site where the login form don’t show up

First don’t panic. I did !

Just try this mysite.com?q=user

Normally It’ll work, once’s connected, solve all that mess!

I have a site where I have a content type which serve also as the base for a ubecart product class.
I have problems lately with it for a particular bug, and I wanted to desactivated most modules and Ubercart also.
Because I have noticed that the problem was only on this content type and not for other.
When I descativate Ubercart modules, I’ve noticed, that my content type disapear also.
I was a bit disapointed, to realize that there was a dependancy of this content type converted to a ubecart class on ubercart.
An I activated again the ubercart modules because i needed this content type.
But once activated, I realized, it lost some settings, all the settings, exept the fields, it means automatic node title settings, form-filter settings and so on, group field…
I was a bit nervous, but luckily, I could set it up again rapidily, importing field from a database backup.
And the I see someting, In the product class, It’s possible to delete the class, actions that don’t delete the content type but give it again its status of core drupal content type and no more of Ubercart classes.
I’ve decided after this experiment to synchronize products with a content type, with the help of rules.
Because, I don’t want to rely on ubercart.
I will certainly learn more about this in the future.

I know there is some complicated way that use hook_node_alter, but I was looking since a long time for somethings easier.

And that’s is, i have it. And if you ask your self the same question, you probably already have seen a comportement of the view module that permit to edit a view, and when the view is validated, go back in the previous page. That’s exactly what I was searching, and the view module pass the destination page in the url. To replace the slash / Character it convert it to its html character equivalent %2F so the syntax is the folowing :
- Base URL of my drupal site : http://www.example.com

- Page I want to go after the form is being validated : links/list

- Page of the form : node/235/edit

So instead of linking to the form like this http://www.example.com/node/235/edit which will leave you after the validation by default to the http://www.example.com/node/235/view page

You link to this url http://www.example.com/node/235/edit?destination=links%2Flist

Watch the syntax of the view in place edit links functionnality, it works this way. What an awesome and easy way the change the form redirection page, it’s great!

1. How to quit the sudo su mode
   I don’t know what you think about it, but I’m lazy to type always sudo and my password when I need to have root permission.

   So I type “sudo su” , in order to become root as long as I want. But being root have also some drawbacks, for example all files create by me as a root by default will belong to me and my group as root so user:root group:root, and thus being difficult to change by other user.

   So It’s useful to become root some time, but also to go back to one’s normal user identity. And the point is, I don’t know yet how to make this.

   To become root you need to type sudo su to become your user type su username