Building out Drupal module interfaces with a stub function

A technique that I’m finding quite useful during module development is to create a “stub” function for use as a generic interface callback for menu items that I want to define, but haven’t yet written callbacks for. For example, if I were building a Drupal 5 module called widgetmaster, I would define:

function _widgetmaster_stub($message = "This feature is still<br>  in development.") {<br>  return '&lt;em&gt;'. t($message) .'&lt;/em&gt;;<br>}<br>

So if I’m planning an admin section for my module but haven’t gotten around to implementing it yet, I can at least build out the menu so I (or a client) can click around and make sure the interaction and flow makes sense… for example:

/**<br> * Implementation of hook_menu().<br> */<br>function widgetmaster_menu($may_cache) {<br>  $items = array();<br>  $access = user_access('access administration pages');<br>  if ($may_cache) {<br>    $items[] = array(<br>      'title' =&gt; t('Widgetmaster Settings'),<br>      'path' =&gt; 'admin/settings/widgetmaster',<br>      'callback' =&gt; '_widgetmaster_stub',<br>      'type' =&gt; MENU_NORMAL_ITEM,<br>      'access' =&gt; $access<br>    );<br><br>    $items[] = array(<br>      'title' =&gt; t('Overview'),<br>      'path' =&gt; 'admin/settings/widgetmaster/overview',<br>      'callback' =&gt; '_widgetmaster_stub',<br>      'type' =&gt; MENU_DEFAULT_LOCAL_TASK,<br>      'access' =&gt; $access<br>    );<br><br>    $items[] = array(<br>      'title' =&gt; t('Advanced'),<br>      'path' =&gt; 'admin/settings/widgetmaster/requiredfields',<br>      'callback' =&gt; '_widgetmaster_stub',<br>      'type' =&gt; MENU_LOCAL_TASK,<br>      'access' =&gt; $access<br>    );<br>}<br>

I can also leave myself specific notes as to what a particular menu callback is supposed to do:

...<br><br>$items[] = array(<br>  'title' =&gt; t('Advanced'),<br>  'path' =&gt; 'admin/settings/widgetmaster/requiredfields',<br>  'callback' =&gt; '_widgetmaster_stub',<br>  'callback arguments' =&gt; array('Select advanced options from<br>          the widgetmaster_frob table and display as a set of               <br>          checkboxes');<br>  'type' =&gt; MENU_LOCAL_TASK,<br>  'access' =&gt; $access<br>);<br><br>...<br>

Usage needn’t be limited to menu callbacks, either; it’s handy wherever you know you’ll eventually be defining a function that returns a string.

I’m finding it very helpful to have these stub interfaces in place early on in development. It helps fine-tune interaction, and it also serves as a contextual TODO list.

Tags: DrupalmoduledevelopmentDrupal5

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