Module development and code questions

Hello Everyone,

I am requesting volunteers in what I think is simple module but that I lack the php, mysql, drupal know how to put it together. Basically the module needs to perform three tasks; create a block with content pulled from the db, create links for the content on the block to other db content, which will be displayed when clicked.

What I have is an spreadsheet file which consist of 5-6 columns and roughly 25,000 rows worth of content (see html example below) which I can turn into a mysql dump of the same proportions (table with 5-6 fields and 25,000 entries). So what I like to do is have field one (eg. Categories) populate the block (which will be labeled Categories or edited at will), each entry in this block will have a name (eg. accessories) which then when clicked will display a page with all the entries that correspond to this category, with of coarse a limit of how many entries to display per page (can be edit as well) and a menu displayed atop the entries ( Back 1, 2, 3, ... Next) so that all entries in that category can be browsed. I am not to sure what other applications this could be used for but in my case displaying large amounts of content without having to create tens or hundreds of pages but just as simple as doing a data dump and letting the module do the work. In my case more specifically displaying a product list. Any input, thoughts or ideas welcomed.

I'm RTMF'ing as fast as I can. I've got things all set up, no questions, no hassle.

Now I want to code-monkey the weblinks so they include an input field for an RSS url. Syndication and aggregation being all the rage in the blogosphere.

Can someone point me in the right direction. I can usually figure it out but need a bit of a push in the right direction.

Tanx

Hi,
anybody know why a div element on line 309 in poll.module is closed at the begining (before links)? Maybe small cosmetic bug?

Mirek

I thought I finally found a great host for my Drupal powered site, but was severly dissapointed when I discovered that the php configuration settings chould NOT be changed in any way. I've searched the Drupal site high and low for a fix for this, but have been unsuccessful. Yesterday I finally discovered a fix for this, so for everyone out there avoiding using quotes in their posts or those who have abandoned Drupal becuase of annoying backslashes - this should fix it for you. I created a function like this:

Hi,
there is a fatal error in module online.

Fatal error: Cannot redeclare throttle_status() (previously declared in C:\www\drupal-cvs\modules\online.module:170) in C:\www\drupal-cvs\modules\statistics.module on line 847

Also: http://drupal.org/node/view/1957

I am using Drupal 4.2.0 RC and module online 4.2.0 (cvs version has problem too).

Mirek
P.S.: Which version of this module is using on drupal.org site. :-)

I'm planning to develop a usenet module right away. My specific needs are for a single newsgroup. Basically just offering my users a web interface to the newgroup to read/post. Not a big deal.

So I thought I'd come by here and think aloud..

I'm still pretty new to drupal, but had the following thought;

why do this as a module at all? I could just create a forum and populate its nodes/comments with a cron job from the newsgroup - it'd be a little more complicated; but basically:
have a table with all node / comment id's that were fetched from the newsgroup.
scan newsgroup hourly (or whatever) for new posts
cron job would also scan nodes in that forum that were posted via my site and post them to the newsgroup

good idea or bad idea? The alternative is a module which would bascially be independant of the drupal strucutre - but why reinvent the wheel?

Here's the one issue that comes to mind;
clearly I cannot expect everyone who posts to the newsgroup to also have an account on my site. So the posts / comments would have to be anonymous. I could append the posters name to the body itself. I'd prefer a solution of being able to have the authors name be the authors name even if there is no corelation to an existing user account.

am I making sense here? Basically allowing anonymous posts to have a given name (although I'm not to keen on permitting my users to do this site-wide).. I haven't dug in to see how difficult this would be, anyone done anything similar?