Fatal error: MCAPI not found

No matter what, a fatal error should never occur. When I install mailchimp and go to Campaigns without installing the MCAPI I get a white screen. I would expect a bit or error handling and a message telling me what's missing and what to do.

@gaele, respectfully, there are plenty of situations where a fatal error will occur that a module cannot, and should not, account for. E.g., not meeting the module requirements or following the installation directions, which do tell you what to do.

there are plenty of situations where a fatal error will occur that a module cannot, and should not, account for.

Well, it could, but we differ on whether it should. Such a fatal error makes me wonder how robust the module is and what else I can expect.

I'd suggest adding a heading "Dependencies" mentioning MCAPI to the project page, perhaps with a link to the README.

@gaele, thanks for the suggestion, the project page already makes the dependency clear. We'll continue to improve the project page and docs over time. There is not open issue, so please stop reopening it.

This caught me out too.

The attached patch stops the fatal error (by returning null), and puts in a watchdog error, and displays a message on the screen.

(Hi levelos - apologies for reopening, I hope my small contribution excuses this behaviour, and I promise not to reopen if you close it again).

The patch in #9 worked for me. I think that this patch improves this module's usabiltiy.

Another approach can be seen in fb_autopost: http://drupalcode.org/project/fb_autopost.git/blob/refs/heads/7.x-1.x:/f...

In addition we can test in the install requirements phase: http://drupalcode.org/project/views_slideshow.git/blob/refs/heads/7.x-3....

Thanks for the review.

Throwing an exception instead of calling drupal_set_message, and also implementing hook_requirements would both be worth doing - setting back to needs work.

I can do both of those things sometime this week; stand by for patchery.

Thanks for the input everyone. Committed a variation of #9 in c37803a.

Hi Levelos,

I've spotted a possible bug in the commit from #13.

You mentioned a variation of the patch from #9, I think from the changes you made there is now a parameter is missing, it should be:

watchdog('mailchimp', $msg, array(), WATCHDOG_ERROR);

rather than

watchdog('mailchimp', $msg, WATCHDOG_ERROR);

If you forget to load the library this missed argument will break admin/reports/dblog page due to a type error.

thanks,
Vincenzo