Give beans a machine name

Well, I went ahead and wrote an initial patch. It doesn't expose any interface for the machine name (which I've added as 'delta', following the model of Boxes module), but for building features and install profiles, this works, as you can set the delta through code.

What this doesn't do, which I just thought of, is set a default value for delta when creating new beans. So I'll leave this issue as active for now, though I'd appreciate comments, especially what should be done to get this into shape to actually get committed.

Yeah, I don't want to export beans themselves either -- I'm with you there. I've already been through the whole exporting Boxes (via features) thing where you realize it's better to just create them in a hook_install() so that you don't accidentally revert their contents after the client has customized them. IIRC you or another Treehouse dev presented on this at DC Chicago. :)

Let me know if you want me to help with finishing the patch.

+++ b/bean.moduleundefined
@@ -356,6 +356,30 @@ function bean_load($bid, $reset = FALSE) {
+ * @see @TODO bean_load_delta_multiple()

Do we need to actually add a bean_load_delta_multiple() function? Or should we remove this comment I had thrown in?

+++ b/bean.moduleundefined
@@ -356,6 +356,30 @@ function bean_load($bid, $reset = FALSE) {
+  $result = db_select('bean', 'b')

Should we drupal_static() cache a delta => bean mapping here? Hard to imagine this function being pounded with the same delta in one page load, but you never know.

+++ b/includes/bean.core.incundefined
@@ -164,7 +165,7 @@ class Bean extends Entity {
+      $values = is_array($this->data) ? $this->data : unserialize($this->data);

unrelated whitespace fix (not a huge deal)

+++ b/includes/bean.core.incundefined
@@ -239,6 +240,10 @@ class Bean extends Entity {
+    if (empty($this->delta)) {
+      $this->delta = preg_replace('/[^a-z0-9_]+/i', '-', $this->label);
+    }

Any reason not to just call drupal_clean_css_identifier()?

(Also, the Entity getter thing is interesting, I hadn't seen that before. I'll have to investigate how that works at some point.)

The latest patch doesn't use the delta in hook_block_info() -- I'm adding that back in and rerolling now.

New patch:

• Uses delta for hook_block_info()
• Uses strtolower() + drupal_clean_css_identifier() + substr() for default delta
• Removes the @TODO comment I had added
• Puts Issue # in both commit messages, fixes a typo in one
• Keeps it as one commit by you, one commit by me
• Notice the [PATCH 1/2] thing? I haven't done this before, but that was the result of git format-patch HEAD~2. Sweet!

You know, maybe that "strtolower() + drupal_clean_css_identifier() + substr()" stuff should be run even if the delta was already set -- the substr() especially since it makes sure the database query doesn't crash. What do you think?

Oh... I'm a bit disappointed not to get credit in my d.o stats, but glad you applied it. Good point about non-generated deltas.

(Interesting. Some day I'll get out of the lowly CTR score of 3! :))

Unfortunately, we missed a bug in the patch that was committed: bean_block_view() didn't get changed to use bean_load_delta(). D'oh!

Follow-up patch attached.

Cool. It's working fine for me.