By carlmcdade on

Does any one have any tips on tools and procedures for reverse engineering Drupal? It has become very tiresome and time wasting to hunt through thousands of lines of code looking for abstract variables and objects.

Right now I am trying to use Zend Studio to run debugging to find errors. But even Zend Studio has problems with the way some parts of the core are written.

The documentation still lacks a definative explaination of how the core engine works and how to use it. I have recently read up on the the Zend engine core and found it easier to understand.

Comments

Boris Mann’s picture

Boris Mann commented

http://drupaldocs.org/

carlmcdade’s picture

carlmcdade commented

has anyone ever wondered how the internal combustion engine works? Do you think you can figure it out by reading a shop manual for 1969 Ford Fairlane? How about the owners manual for a 1977 Ford Pinto?

This is how drupaldocs.org looks. I have even gone so far as to scan the site a pull out just the commentary that has to do with the inner working of the Drupal. Take for instance the use of hooks. Well after reading about them in the docs I decided to try and find more information about hooks in some of those heavy compu sci theory books sitting on my shelf gathering dust. I found only one small reference to hooks in a design patterns book on Delphi.

The documentaion does not cover use of this type of coding:

call_user_func_array($menu['items'][$mid]['callback'], $arguments);

Now while I have used Callbacks myself many times, finding out just what this does means running a trace or just knowing the code. Since I don't think that anyone can remember this much code then there has to be a commented version for them to use or they have to be familiar with the technique used throughout the software. Those comments and techniques are what is missing from the docs.

---------------------------
info for Drupal installation
__________________________
Carl McDade
Information Technology Consult
Team Macromedia
www.hivemindz.com

Dries’s picture

Dries commented

Have you read these?

  1. Drupal's page serving mechanism
  2. Drupal's menu building mechanism
  3. Drupal's node building mechanism

They are all part of the module developer's guide.

carlmcdade’s picture

carlmcdade commented

I have searched and searched through those about a month ago and found nothing but an older flowchart. Did something change in the linking?

Thanks those are a big help!!!
---------------------------
info for Drupal installation
__________________________
Carl McDade
Information Technology Consult
Team Macromedia
www.hivemindz.com