custom module dev. adding data to users tabs from the ground up

Here is ld_hack with the original user_view code commented out as a reference below my working hacks

Since we know that we have a list of installed modules, it seems that user_view invokes hook_something_or_other on all installed modules.

First off, reading the docs on module_invoke ()shows a very different structure than what I see here.

http://api.drupal.org/api/HEAD/function/module_invoke

function module_invoke() {
  $args = func_get_args();
  $module = array_shift($args);
  $hook = array_shift($args);
  $function = $module .'_'. $hook;
  if (module_hook($module, $hook)) {
    return call_user_func_array($function, $args);
  }
} 

I don't know what's going on here, but lets continue and see what we can get.
here is ld_hack for next step.

function ld_hack(){
  $fields = array();
	print 'in hack<br>';
  foreach (module_list() as $module) {
	 	print $module . '<br>';
	  //if ($data = module_invoke($module, 'user', 'view', '', $account)) {
		$data = module_invoke($module, 'user', 'view', '', $account) ;
		print 'data = '. $data .'<br>';
	}
	/*
  foreach (module_list() as $module) {
	  if ($data = module_invoke($module, 'user', 'view', '', $account)) {
      foreach ($data as $category => $items) {
        foreach ($items as $item) {
          $item['class'] = "$module-". $item['class'];
          $fields[$category][] = $item;
        }
      }
    }
  }
  */
}

running it, I get:

n hack
filter
data =
node
data =
system
data =
user
data = Array
....

okey dokey loooks like the user module invokes its own hook...
none of the other modules were invoked.

the next question, is what hook?
hmmm.

Okey Dokey,

I have found two cases.

The first case is the easy case, it is from the blog_user

    $items[] = array('title' => 'title of this item'
                                 'value' => string, drupal link or external url (technically, a string in all cases.
                                 'class'  => another string
                                )
    return array(t('Header Name') => $items)
    

so we return an array arrays of strings named Header Name??

comes the profile_user case.

I am not going to post the code from the profile.module here, as it will clutter up the post.

However the relevant functions are profile_user, profile_view_profile and profile_view_field.

The answer to this quest is contained in the profile_view_profile function and here is the gist of the matter...

while ($field = db_fetch_object($result)) {
    if ($value = profile_view_field($user, $field)) {
      $description = ($field->visibility == PROFILE_PRIVATE) ? t('.some string.') : '';
      $title = ($field->type != 'checkbox') ? check_plain($field->title) : NULL;
      $item = array('title' => $title,  // work phone, home phone,  etc...
        'value' => $value,                  //string whether 123.456.7890 or drupal url or external url
        'class' => $field->name,        //profile_x name of db field from profile_fields table
      );
      $fields[$field->category][] = $item;  'category of the profile. at our site, it is "Contact Information"
    }
  }
  return $fields;    
}

Translating, what is returned will be an array similar/identical to the simple case array, but which should be more usefull for my needs in ld.module

basically, profile_user('view') will return something like this.

('Contact Information'=>
('title'=>'work phone','value'=>'727.123.4567','class'=>'profile_work_phone')()....)

So for my ld module, I will return

('LD HEADING HERE'=>
('title'=>'work phone','value'=>'727.123.4567','class'=>'profile_work_phone')()....)
etc.

and that answers my question.

hope it helps.

t.