Module development and code questions

I'm getting ready to install Flexinode.module and I see there have been several patches to this module.

At the top and in actual file there is this line:
"// $Id: flexinode.module,v 1.36.2.4 2005/02/06 18:20:26 killes Exp $'

does this mean that the file has been updated to include all patches up to 2005/02/06 by killes -- even though on the Flexinode Download page it says this:

"Download latest release (4.5.0, 24/09/2004 - 15:20)"

If wrong guess, please share what it means

I am wondering if there is a way to make it so that when people sign up for my site, they have to pay a sign-up fee. I have played with the ecommerce package, and haven't found a way to do it with existing functionalities of Drupal. Should I just make it so that sign-ups require admin approval and send an e-mail out with a payment link? It would be much easier if I could just integrate this functionality into the sign-up page. Would I need to simply extend the current user module, or how would I go about writing a module that plugs into the current user module?

Hello,
I would like to contribute some code to be included in the next release of Drupal. It adds search to aggregator.module

You can see it at work here: http://www.phillyfuture.org/search?keys=wifi

I believe this is a very important feature that should be part of Drupal's default aggregator.module. If you take a look at my example, it shows you just how poweful such a search can be - since it is limited by RSS feeds that are flowing thru my aggregator - it provides high quality results that are relevent to the mission of my site.

The feature was simple to add. I just added an implementation of hook_search():


/**
* Implementation of hook_search().
*/
function aggregator_search($keys) {
$find = array();

// Replace wildcards with MySQL/PostgreSQL wildcards.
$keys = str_replace('*', '%', $keys);

$words = explode(",", $keys);
foreach ($words as $word) {
$word = trim($word);
$title_filter[] = "lower(i.title) LIKE '%" . $word . "%'";
$feed_filter[] = "lower(f.title) LIKE '%" . $word . "%'";
$content_filter[] = "lower(i.description) LIKE '%" . $word . "%'";
}
$filter_query = implode(" OR ", $feed_filter) . ' OR ' .implode(" OR ", $title_filter) . ' OR ' . implode(" OR ", $content_filter);

$result = db_query_range("
SELECT i.*, f.link AS feed_link, f.title AS feed_title, f.url AS feed_rss
FROM {aggregator_item} i

I want my module to add advertising to all node and taxonomy pages.
I need not Drupal block, I need to place some HTML at the top of main area of the page.

Can I do it without modifying node and taxonomy modules or themes ?

In the Taxonomy.mod if you change the param "Depth", you can change the depth result. Form what I'm seeing the Article.mod, it has the same feature and I have made a paste of the code in question below. I'm not a programer, so really I don't have clue what it actually does. But from the little I do understand it looks like it should work, but it hasn't been. could somone comment please. i;ve been chagng the $depth on line 14.

* @param $tids
* An array of term IDs to match.
* @param $operator
* How to interpret multiple IDs in the array. Can be "or" or "and".
* @param $depth
* How many levels deep to traverse the taxonomy tree. Can be a nonnegative
* integer or "all".
* @param $pager
* Whether the nodes are to be used with a pager (the case on most Drupal
* pages) or not (in an XML feed, for example).
* @return
* A resource identifier pointing to the query results.
*/
function article_select_nodes($tids = array(), $operator = 'and', $depth = 1, $pager = TRUE, $count = 0) {
if (count($tids) > 0) {
// For each term ID, generate an array of descendant term IDs to the right depth.
$descendant_tids = array();
if ($depth === 'all') {
$depth = NULL;
}
foreach ($tids as $index => $tid) {
$term = taxonomy_get_term($tid);
$tree = taxonomy_get_tree($term->vid, $tid, 1, $depth);
$descendant_tids[] = array_merge(array($tid), array_map('_taxonomy_get_tid_from_term', $tree));

Snippets offer functionality similar to standard PHP-execution filter, but I hope in more flexible manner. Site admin or power users may create named snippets of PHP-code (with access to Drupal API), then categorize and store them to the site code repository. Particular users can't view PHP-code - only snippet name and help. From user point of view - snippets are macros, which may be used in postings - nodes and comments. Macros may accept parameters which transferred to snippet code. Example: [macro], [macro|param1|param2], [link|9165].