Tiny module to automatically fill in platform publish path based on title

Very nice! I would very well see this merged directly in the hosting_platform module in 2.x. For this to happen, we would need a patch instead of a full module (and no need for a feature there, in my opinion).

Also, we try not to depend on the /var/aegir assumption, or at least as least as possible. Right now, it is not hardcoded at all in the frontend, and we only depend on the backend for that initial creation - it defaults to the Aegir user's $HOME directory:

      $this->setProperty('aegir_root', getenv('HOME'));

(provision.context.server.inc:50).

That property is not propagated to the frontend, unfortunately... But maybe it should be. There were two variables close to that property in the web_server before, but they were dropped in the great "services" migration:

  db_drop_field($ret, "hosting_web_server", "backup_path");
  db_drop_field($ret, "hosting_web_server", "config_path");

That table was eventually completely dropped.

Maybe we should bring back that table, but I'm not sure it's worth it - maybe a frontend-wide variable configured on install/upgrade would be sufficient. Also, maybe it shouldn't be called "aegir_root" (which doesn't mean much) but "platform_path" or something similar.

As for the code itself, it looks sane. One comment - I would rather see a similar pattern than for context or client sanitization. Example from hosting_client_sanitize():

  return substr(strtolower($prefix . preg_replace("/[!\W\.\-]/", "", $title)), 0, MAX_GROUP_LENGTH);

... same could be done but instead of removing, replace with dashes (I would rather see dashes than underscores), allow dots (drupal-6.20 is fine for a path), throw in lower case and limit the path length.

So there you go. To sum up, I think there could be some improvements to the patch, but before it's merged into aegir, it needs:

1. to be a patch (probably on hosting_platform.module)
2. to not hardcode /var/aegir

In the meantime (and for 1.x?) this can live in contrib too...

Interesting, subscribing.

For the regex, you probably need /g. I'll review the rest of the code later if i find time.

I am not sure about that regex still. :)

/[^\w^\.]/g, '-'

I think you only need one caret, at the beginning. The way that regex reads right now, it's *not* going to replace carets....

The javascript is a bit hard to read here:

http://drupalcode.org/project/hosting_platform_pathauto.git/blob/2fea82d...

I suspect line 10 and below have too much indentation, am I right? The code could use some comments as I have trouble understanding exactly what it does... for example, why do we hook only if the path is the same as the name...?

  11       if ($('.platform-path').val() === machine) {

Also, if you provide a patch, we can start looking at merging this in 2.x.

Please keep going! This is great stuff that should get in! :)

Ah, and ahem... sorry for the delays ;)

Thanks for the work, I'm going to suggest some improvements to your javascript too:

$('.platform-name:not(.processed)').each(function() {
    $('.platform-name')
      .addClass('processed')

Since you've made jQuery find the elements once, you don't need to bother doing it again, so you can write the code above as:

$('.platform-name:not(.processed)').each(function() {
    $(this)
      .addClass('processed')

You can do this throughout the .each callback function.

Also, you shouldn't just add a 'processed' class, but name the class to match your behavior, so: 'hosting-platform-pathauto-processed' this means that you don't conflict with other behaviors.

You should also wrap the entire javascript in a closure, which is super simple, add the following to the top of the file:

(function ($) {

And this to the bottom:

})(jQuery);

Keep up the good work!

Hi Dane,
I don't know PHP so I am not sure of what I'll tell you.

"If the actual path is different from the sanitized human-readable name, that indicates that the user has manually edited the path"

This makes me remember when pathauto decides the path is automatic after changing the title of the node, even if we gave him a path not automatic at the beginning. I think this module tries to resolve this: Pathauto persistent state (http://drupal.org/project/pathauto_persist).

So, would it be possible to save that somewhere in the DB? If the path is really automatic or it has been written down by a human.

Thanks for your work.

Javascript closures:
It was a change introduced in D7 core JS files, but there's no reason to not be compatible now. More details are here: http://drupal.org/node/224333#javascript_compatibility

@Dane Powell I'd like to merge this into the 2.x branch of Aegir soon, would it be possible to get commit access to your project, so I can make some tweaks, then we'll just pull it in with our make file.

Awesome thanks!

Added to 2.x in commit:030853e67295b9bf31a07ba2aebfb4568cb17f2c

I've done this in our makefile, and enabled it by default. @Dane Powell thanks for your contribution, if you keep maintaining it, and then give us a shout when you want us to pull in a new version, we can.