By dakku on

Hi,
I am writing a module that implements the following URL structure:

domain.foo/0123456

as you can see, arg(0) in this case is numeric and under drupal 6 integer values pass the corresponding URL component.

I am trying to do:

function foobar_menu(){
$items['%foobar_id'] = array(
'page callback' => 'foobar',
'access arguments' => array('access content'),
'page arguments' => array(0),
'type' => MENU_CALLBACK,
);
}

function foobar_id_load($foobar_id){
return $foobar_id;
}

Currently this is returning 404, it appears drupal doesnt like arg(0) to be numeric, any way to implement this?

Cheers
d

⋅ Categories: Drupal 6.x

Comments

dakku’s picture

dakku commented

hmm,
After a quick chat with Rob Douglas, my first impression is that drupal 6 is not setup to be able to handle wildcards at arg(0)

Can anyone please shed some light on this?

xano’s picture

xano
he/they
Primary language English
Location Southampton
commented

It might be this won't work, because every menu path will match the wildcard. I'm not sure as I haven't studied the whole wildcard thing yet, but it might be worth it to try a path like foobar/%foobar_id.

dakku’s picture

dakku commented

yes if I do

domain.foo/foobar/%foobar

that results in a page, but this solution is not SEO friendly as such as %foobar will be 1 level deeper from the homepage according to google.

Alternative solution for now is:

domain.foo/blah-0123456

This kinda makes me wanna go back to drupal 5

nicholasthompson’s picture

nicholasthompson
Primary language English
commented

I've run a test and come up with the following hypothesis...

Consider the following paths (which would be used as an index of the $items array):

  1. '1234'
  2. 'test/1234'

Now look at the menu_router_build function...

Note in that in that function, it loops over all hook_menu functions and builds and array of paths => modules as $callbacks. After each module has thrown back its $items array, the results are array_merge'd into $callbacks.

Now take a quick look at the array_merge page and you'll learn that array_merge will reset any numeric indexes.

So? Why does this matter to us? We defined our $items array keys as STRINGS (hence the single quotes around them). PHP is a kind language most of the time - but in this case its being evil. It's "efficiently" casting our string 'numbers' into ACTUAL numbers.

Here is a summary of what happens:

  • We define an item as a STRING, which happens to be a number.
  • PHP sees this and thinks "ah, a number! I shall down cast thee to an integer for you my lord".
  • We then do an array_merge and PHP kindly resets all numeric indexes for us.

This is why our lovely '1234' never appears as a callback.

Now part of the solution is to change that:

$callbacks = array_merge($callbacks, $router_items);

to this:

$callbacks = $callbacks + $router_items;

or maybe...

$callbacks += $router_items;

... if you like short lines.

I tried this and did a print_r after the $callbacks was built - the '1234' entry was PRESERVED (albeit as an integer, not string). However the menu callback still did not function. I assume there is some more array_merge malarkey going on somewhere else which is probably causing the same problem (in which case we've simply moved the problem from one cog in the machine to another).

Thoughts?

xano’s picture

xano
he/they
Primary language English
Location Southampton
commented

Thoughts?

I think this is a good reason for a bug report for 6.x-dev. For now you should change the paths.

By the way: Kudos for the research, Nicholas!

nicholasthompson’s picture

nicholasthompson
Primary language English
commented

Consider:
$items['%/test'] = ...<./code>

Why doesn't this work?

Does PHP 'like' array keys starting with symbols? I'm pretty sure it doesn't like VARIABLE names starting with numbers and symbols...

wmostrey’s picture

wmostrey commented

Could it be as simple as that you forgot to return $items at the end of hook_menu?

sweetie1’s picture

sweetie1 commented

i am also having same problem but it my case arg(0) is a string still my function doesn't get called


$items['%my_special_loader'] = array(
    'title' => t('List'),
    'page callback' => 'node_list',
    'page arguments' => array('new','old',0 ),
    'access arguments' => array('name of a function that returns true'),
    'type' => MENU_CALLBACK_ITEM
);

function my_special_loader_load($text) {
  return $text;
}

and here arg(0) which i get is a string like 'tagterm'.
if problem is obly with integer numbers, it should work in my case ???

mercmobily’s picture

mercmobily commented

Hi,

This bug is _really_ bugging me on Drigg.

I reported it:

http://drupal.org/node/314406

Bye,

Merc.