Module development and code questions

Hello!

I want to have a "sandbox" for pages and stories where anonymous users (=user not logged in) can add, edit and delete pages and stories - but only the pages and stories they have created. The access rights should be granted based on the session id, meaning a user can only view (and subsequently edit and delete) those nodes where the node id is associated with his session id in a separate table.

If possible, the pages module should still be usable for static portions of the site.

I really would like to find a way for registered users of my Drupal site to be able to Register for events I am hosting. Not all registered users would be in every event and once they are logged in to the site, ideally it would be easy for them to register for any new events I would add.

And then I'd also like to integrate PayPal paying for those events.

I tried the event.module but it was WAY too basic for what I am looking for.

I got interested in Drupal due to this need and now that I have it installed, I am doubting that it will suit my needs.

My first patching venture, figured I might as well learn how to do my own laundry, so to speak.

I understand these:
109c110,115
76a77 and a few others,

but this one has me?
128a135,138

at line 128 ... add lines 135 through 138 ?

Anybody got a quick way to figure out if a particular module is installed and activated?

For example : lets say I would like to add a 'Add Buddy' link to the members.module member list, but only if buddylist.module is installed and configured...

Is there another module that does this that I can have a look at?
Is there a standard way of doing this?

TIA

~Tat~

I wanted to change the output of the image filter, so I edited this line that I found in the module code, but nothing has changed in the output image.assist generates. It still gives me the same format. Where shall I change the code if I wanted to add some divs and classes? Thanks!

I've been a drupal site user/admin for over a year and have found all kinds of great things to use it for. Just upgraded my site to 4.5.2 and I have to say it doesn't leave me wanting for much. There are a few things I wish it could do so I figured it was about time to roll up my sleves and dive in...

The first thing I am attempting to do is to make the archive.module block and page blogcentric - that is to say context sensitive to the currently displayed blog. I've managed to hack archive.module using some keen xtreme programming methodology (read: 5 nights trial and error) and have actually got it to work - however it's pretty ugly. I'd like to a) clean up the code using more drupalese syntax b) perhaps port to a seperate module as that seems the way to do things properly 'round here

1) Ok so the first thing I did was put !^blog\/([0-9]*)! into the block path for archive (neat trick that) so the calendar only shows up on the blog pages.

2) Next, in the archive_calendar function I added a preg_match to hack out the user id of the current blog from $_GET['q'] like this:

// get the users uid from the url
preg_match("/^blog\/([0-9]*)/",$_GET['q'],$blog_uid);

I didn't like this much but I couldn't figure out how to get at the $uid variable or the $node->$uid attribute from the archive module. Is there a better way to do this than what I have above?

3) from there it is a simple matter of changing the SQL to include a peek at the n.uid so as to pull out only nodes for the current blog's user