/Drupal_Extension

Extension to customize Drupal as website framework

Primary LanguagePHP

Drupal_Extension

Extension to customize Drupal as website framework.

About

Similar to WordPress, Drupal is a CMS that has a lot of themes to choose from. Use drupal as a website framework can save a lot of work on user interface.

This project aims to find a way to allow develop any custom functions based on a Drupal installation.

Issues to address

For this purpose, one should be able to create custom roles (user groups), members of such roles may or may not be able to post blogs, but can access custom pages once log in. Several things are crucial:

  1. create custom role(s).
  2. check if a user is logged in, and access user profile such as ID, login name, user name, email, user type. Based on this, one can add custom database tables and build whatever function that is desired.
  3. make use of Drupal theme in custom page.

A study on these requirements proves fruitful. Over the past week, I was able to build a member page for some Drupal themes. It's easy to extend to more themes.

How to use templates in this project

The projects contains a series of folders member_[theme]. Each folder is for a different theme. Right now the available themes include:

  • Bartik
  • Bluez
  • Business

In order to use the templates, follow these steps:

  • Copy the theme template folder(s) to your Drupal installation root
  • In Drupal admin bar, go to Appearance, active your theme, say "Bartik".
  • In Drupal admin bar, go to Structure -> Menus, in "Main menu" section, click on "Add Link", add link to "member".
    • Note: if the "Member" link already exists, you can just update its URL.
  • Now visit your Drupal homepage, click on "Member" link, it'll bring you to the custom page.

That's all.

Implementation: Basics

1) Create custom roles

2) Check user login status, and obtain user profile

Basically, in order to access Drupal's built in framework functions, you need to bootstrap it by including the following code at the head of your page:

<?php
/*
 * Note: chdir() must use the root of drupal. Otherwise it won't work.
 */
chdir('/var/www/html/drupal'); // Drupal root directory.
$base_url = 'http://mysite.com/drupal'; // Drupal site url.
require_once './includes/bootstrap.inc';
define('DRUPAL_ROOT', getcwd());
drupal_bootstrap(DRUPAL_BOOTSTRAP_FULL);

include "header.php";
?>

Then you can check if a user is logged in with the global $user variable:

function is_user_logged_in() {
    global $user;
    return isset($user) && $user->uid > 0;
}

and then further access user profile:

function showUserInfo() {
    global $user;
    $user_info = "Current User:<br/>" . <<<EOF
uid: $user->uid <br/>
name: $user->name <br/>
mail: $user->mail <br/>
EOF;
    $user_info .= "roles: " . implode(', ', $user->roles);
    print "$user_info <br/><br/>";

    var_dump($user);

3) Use Drupal theme in custom page.

Different from WordPress, which uses get_header() and get_footer() functions for a theme, Drupal uses page template. So at present, this project creates custom header and footer by extracting html source from an existing page of the current theme.

So far, a minimal template page looks like this:

<?php
chdir('/var/www/html/drupal'); // Drupal root directory.
$base_url = 'http://mysite.com/drupal'; // Drupal site url.
require_once './includes/bootstrap.inc';
define('DRUPAL_ROOT', getcwd());
drupal_bootstrap(DRUPAL_BOOTSTRAP_FULL);

if (is_admin()) {
    include "header_admin.php";
} else {
    include "header.php";
}


if (is_user_logged_in()) {
    showUserInfo();
} else {
    print "<a href='../'>Login</a> | <a href='../?q=user/register'>Register</a>";
}


function is_user_logged_in() {
    global $user;
    return isset($user) && $user->uid > 0;
}

function is_admin() {
    global $user;
    return in_array("administrator", $user->roles);
}

function showUserInfo() {
    global $user;
    $user_info = "Current User:<br/>" . <<<EOF
uid: $user->uid <br/>
name: $user->name <br/>
mail: $user->mail <br/>
EOF;
    $user_info .= "roles: " . implode(', ', $user->roles);
    print "$user_info <br/><br/>";

    var_dump($user);
}

include("footer.php");
?>

Implementation: More Details

1) Hide a menu item

Say you have the "member" menu item when a user logs in. However you want to hide it for anonymous users. There are some online discussions for this [2][3].

Of course the more formal way is to look into Drupal source code to hide a menu item at menu generation time.

A more simple way is to hide it using javascript when the page loads.

For example, checking the menu's html source you see this:

<ul id="main-menu-links" class="links clearfix">
    <li class="menu-218 first active"><a href="/" class="active">Home</a></li>
    <li class="menu-308 last"><a href="http://mysite.com/member/">Member</a></li>
</ul>

Then you can modify /themes/[theme]/templates/page.tpl.php, and append this code (this is good for the Bartik theme) to the end:

<?php if (! isset($user) || $user->uid == 0) { ?>
<script type="text/javascript">
    var v = document.getElementsByClassName('menu-308 last');
    v[0].style.display = 'none';
</script>
<?php } ?>

Sometimes the main menu section is like this:

<div id="main-menu">
    <ul class="menu">
        <li class="first leaf"><a href="/" class="active">Home</a></li>
        <li class="leaf"><a href="/member_business" title="Member homepage.">Member</a></li>
    </ul>
</div>

Then you can append this code to end of /themes/[theme]/templates/html.tpl.php (for homepage, if this file exists) and /themes/[theme]/templates/page.tpl.php (for other pages).

<?php if (! isset($user) || $user->uid == 0) { ?>
<script type="text/javascript">
    var div = document.getElementsByClassName('menu');
    var ul = div[0];  //alert(ul.innerHTML);
    for (var i = 0, n = ul.childNodes.length; i < n; i += 2) {
        var item = ul.childNodes[i];
        if (item.innerHTML.indexOf('Member') > 0) {
            item.style.display = 'none';
            break;
        }
    }
</script>
<?php } ?>

Or you could do this:

<?php if (! isset($user) || $user->uid == 0) { ?>
<script type="text/javascript">
function hideMemLink() {
    var menu = document.getElementById('main-menu');
    if (menu === null) return;

    var nodes = menu.getElementsByTagName('li');
    for (var i = 0, n = nodes.length; i < n; ++ i) {
        var node = nodes[i];
        if (node.innerHTML.indexOf('Member') > 0) {
            node.style.display = 'none';
            break;
        }
    }
}

hideMemLink();
</script>
<?php } ?>

Multiple levels of menu

Drupal by default takes care of this. It also defines weight of menu items for their ordering.

Register approval

In WordPress a user registers and by default is approved. In Drupal, by default a user registers and needs admin approval to be activated.

Register Catpcha

This are some Drupal plugins for this. See [4].

Forum plugins

There are some Drupal plugins for forum. See [5][6].

Create your own plugin

See [7].

Misc Stuff

  • Drupal site setting is in: /sites/default/settings.php

  • Drupal site theme is in: /themes/[theme]/

  • Drupal theme page template: /themes/[theme]/templates/page.tpl.php

  • Installed themes are stored in /sites/all/themes/. Delete a theme folder here, it will disappear from admin page.

Future Work

Summary

This project shows how to create custom pages for logged in users of a Drupal site.

License

Apache/BSD/MIT/GPLv2

Author

X. Chen
Created On: August 28, 2015
Last Modified: August 28, 2015

References:

[1] http://www.nguyenquyhy.com/2014/06/access-current-user-outside-of-drupal/
[2] Hide navigation for anon users
[3] Role based visibility of menu items
[4] Drupal Captcha plugin
[5] 6 Best Drupal Forum Module - Best Plugin
[6] Comparison of current forum software
[7] Create your own plugins
[8] Unravelling the Drupal 8 Plugin System
[9] Training videos for Joomla, WordPress, Drupal
[10] Drupal vs WordPress
[11] WordPress vs Joomla vs Drupal – CMS Popularity War