At lunch one day at the OSCMS conference in Vancouver, a few of us were sitting around the lunch table, sort of lamenting the fact that there was so much work needed to create new modules. First you have to remember, "What are the hooks I need again?" Then you have to remember, "What are the arguments for the such-and-such hook again?" and so on and so on. Wouldn't it be cool if there was a tool that would let you pick what kind of module you wanted to make, would automatically select the hooks you needed, and then generate the code for you?
Well, Module Builder is intended to be such a tool, as well as a tool to help new developers get on their feet with module development and learn how hooks work and so on. I've been kind of toiling away on it in my spare time for about a month now, have shown it to the developers' list a few weeks back, and now I think it's maybe ready to show it to a broader audience.
In a nutshell, here's how it works:
1. You enable the module just like any other module.
2. You go to the "module builder" menu (which is tied to an "access module builder" permission)
3. You fill in details about your module, such as the name, description, and so on.
4. You can select from either pre-defined hook groups, and/or expand the fieldsets to select specific hooks you need.
5. Click "Submit" and receive a textarea with the code to your module inside. Simply copy/paste into a .module file, save it to your modules directory, and you're good to go!
DDEV is the official local development tool of Drupal. And like Drupal, DDEV depends on the support of the open source community.
