By jwuk on

I'm trying to understand some of the internals of Drupal and perhaps a glossary of terms would help me. However, if I do a search for 'glossary' I get a lot of hits for a glossary module.

I've also tried http://drupal.org/glossary but that gets me a 404.

My immediate problem is to understand this:
"The Drupal menu system was always much more than what the name suggests. It's not only used to display visible navigation menus but also to map Drupal paths to their callbacks with proper access checking."

In particular, "Drupal path", "callback", and perhaps "proper access checking", though I'm guessing the latter means a mechanism whereby the navigation menus vary in content depending on which user is logged in (or none).

I'd be very grateful for answers to those specific questions, but I'm sure I'll have more and so I'm thinking if I can find a useful glossary either on drupal.org or elsewhere it would save me taking up people's time.

Thanks, and if I should have posted in a better place do please point that out, I wasn't sure where to ask.

⋅ Categories: Drupal 6.x

Comments

yelvington’s picture

yelvington commented

Yes, and if you read the "getting started" guide, you can't miss it.

jwuk’s picture

jwuk commented

Thanks. I did read that guide a couple of months ago. Returning to it now I find that I should have been looking for 'Terminology', not 'Glossary' and it's not where most glossaries are (at the end of a section). Searching for 'glossary' doesn't help.

Unfortunately the 'Terminology' section (http://drupal.org/node/937) doesn't answer my specific question. "...also to map Drupal paths to their callbacks" -- is a Drupal path a path in the sense of the last part of the URL? In the context of a menu hierarchy it seems more related to the ancestors of a menu item.

And what's a 'callback'? It's nowhere on that page. I'm familiar with the term as used in programming, e.g. in C, but that doesn't seem to be how it's being used in this context.

Thanks for your help, appreciated. If you can explain it a bit more please...

[Update] http://drupal.org/node/31644 'Understanding Drupal paths' explains that a Drupal path is indeed the last part of the URL, as I'd supposed. And then the final para knocks me for six by giving an example that is unrelated to a URL ('Some other places to find Drupal paths'). I'm more confused than ever.

Wolfflow’s picture

Wolfflow commented

FYI: The term you where looking for was add to the Common english expression & acronyms used on Drupal.org

Thank You for your suggestion - Doc Team

Cheers - Wolfflow
If you look at word and nouns you do not clearly understand take a look at Common Terminology, Feel free to propose missing Terms

Contact me for drupal projects in English, German, Italian, Drupal Hosting Support.

jwuk’s picture

jwuk commented

Thanks Wolfflow, I've just been through the revisions you've made to http://drupal.org/node/302232 (Common english expression & acronyms used on Drupal.org) and you're making a lot of improvements.

'Callback' doesn't really help though, it just introduces more jargon, such as 'registered'. Can I suggest a better wording? No, I can't, because actually I think the most helpful way to handle the reader's need here is to point him at an article that sets it in context.

I've just been rereading http://drupal.org/node/10858, a superbly written article, but describing 4.6. I scanned that for 'callback' and found the term introduced without a definition, but the context gives quite a good idea of what it's about. And in a following paragraph there's "[Jonathan Chaffer: Each "hook" (our word for what you call a callback) ...]"!

So I now think the reason I got confused reading http://drupal.org/node/102338 (Drupal menu system (Drupal 6.x)) was perhaps because here again someone is using the term 'callback' when perhaps they mean hook? Or does Drupal have two distinct concepts, a hook and a callback?

I now suspect your glossary entry for 'callback' might have been pulled from a dictionary of computing, rather than from Drupal usage. Does Drupal use a registration mechanism?

To me a callback is a programming technique where function foo() calls function bar(), where bar() accepts a function parameter and "calls back" to the function that foo() provided. I don't know PHP well enough to know if that technique is relevant, nor whether Drupal uses it -- Drupal appears to get most of its flexibility instead by having function names (hooks) for which the caller generates a call by dynamically creating the name. To me, more familiar with compiled languages, it's a trick that's quite strange, but I guess I'll get used to! :)

Thanks Wolfflow, I think you've got me a bit closer to my goal. I suspect I'm wrong to read a Drupal doc, scratch my head, and think that I'll gain enlightenment if only I can understand each individual word.

Wolfflow’s picture

Wolfflow commented

Dear @jwuk , Thank you very much for your acknowledges. I will take care to get some more technical help on the matter you just described above. I'm a newbie in PHP so I cannot really follow your argumentation to decide over this.
But be sure any one of the Drupal Core Team will read this and give me the right definition, explanation about "callback" and "hook" that may be appropriate and simple to understand and to be reviewed in our Terminology page.

Thank you for your feedback!!

P.S. Edit: I have add your link reference to Drupal's page serving mechanism to the term.

Cheers - Wolfflow
If you look at word and nouns you do not clearly understand take a look at Common Terminology, Feel free to propose missing Terms

Contact me for drupal projects in English, German, Italian, Drupal Hosting Support.