The Drupal way in programming is 60% about hooks 10% about nodeapi and the rest is ingenuity. That's allright, but one fact has always troubled me. And that is - how much effort is spent on discovering which module implements the hook I need. Far enough, the old caching/memoizing trick does the job to ensure that the cpu time is not expensive. Yeah, but still it's outside simplicity might be, just might be implemented in a more elegant fashion.

Drupal hooks implement a nearly Aspect Oriented API. The cross-cut is the point where the hook is invoked. aspect(cross-cut) === hook. The different aspects are declared as moduleName_hook. The disatvantage is that these are indiscriminate. Hooks are always fired. Pros - simplicty, cons - wasted cpu cycles.

I wonder. Is it possible to achieve a similarly simple syntax, but with the added advantage of not firing unnessesary hook calls.

read more