Drupal WebForms Data Structure Reference? - drupal

I am relatively new to Drupal. We have a site and I've been asked to jump in and make some changes. I'm working on customizing the output of the Webforms module. I'm having trouble doing so because I can't seem to find a reference to the various data structures Webforms uses.
For example, I need to change something in a preprocess hook. Passed into the hook is a structure called $variables. I can see that attributes are being added to the piece I want to change, so I know I'm in the right hook. What I want to do is add something to the text. But I can't figure out where in $variables the text is so I can change it.
I'm sure what I need to change is in there, but I can't seem to get at it. All the documentation I've found on the web is either "paste this code in" or assumes you know the data structures.
So:
1. Is there a reference anywhere to these structures? $variables is one. $submission, $components are others. There are probably more. I know their contents vary widely with the specific webform, but looking for a general reference.
2. How can I see the contents of one of the structures from inside a hook? I've tried a lot of things, but no luck. Would be great to either have it output to the Apache log, or show up on the screen, something...
Any help would be greatly appreciated. It feels like there's real power here, but I can't get at it because I'm missing some basics.

I would say you need to install 2 modules to figure out what is going on...
First Devel, allowing you to use the dmp function. This will output a whole array to the message area.
And then my new favorite module, Search Krumo.
A webform is generated from large array of data and finding the bit that is relevant to you can often be difficult just looking though the dmp output. Search Krumo puts a search box in the message area allowing you to search for any instances of a string in the whole array structure. When you've found the bit that is relevant it also lets you copy the path to that array element so you can easily modify values buried deep in multi-arrays.
EDIT:
If you don't want the output on the screen but would rather log it then use Devel Debug Log. Very useful for debugging ajax requests etc.
If you just need to log simple strings not whole arrays then the dd function is useful combined with: tail -f /tmp/drupal_debug.txt assuming you have SSH access.

Related

Frama-C's extensible printer and projects

I am trying to make changes to the behavior of a function and print the results to a file. The ViewCfg plug-in described in the Plug-in Development Guide does something similar, but I am trying to avoid having to use Ast.get, which ViewCfg uses. I am thinking of extending Printer.extensible_printer which, according to the Frama-C API Documentation, is something I can do if I want to obtain a custom pretty-printer.
However, if I extend the pretty-printer as described in the API docs, unless I'm doing something wrong, I notice that the changes I make take place regardless of which project is set as the current project. I'm using File.create_project_from_visitor to create a new project and Project.set_current to set the new project as the current project before I use the custom pretty-printer.
Is it true that any change made by a class that extends Printer.extensible_printer applies to all projects? I happen to be using frama-c-Aluminium-20160502, which I know is not the latest version.
EDIT: Sorry, I should have made this clearer in the beginning, but I'm not actually making changes to the behavior of a function. I'm reading in the behavior of a function, then based on that, I'm trying to generate as output valid C code that's meant to be read as input by another program.
Regarding AST.get, the only reason I was avoiding it was that it sounds like it gets the entire AST, while I'm only interested in part of it, i.e. behaviors. But if I'm just making things harder for myself by avoiding it, then I'll go ahead and use it.

How to discover the abap development objects' properties?

I'm comming from the java world, and i'd like to know if there's anything that can help me understand the properties of abap development objects.... something like reflection.
Knowing that everything that goes on in ABAP is persisted somewhere inside a database, i'd like to know how would i go about finding out HOW and WHERE an object is saved.
For instance, i'd like to know if there are any functions that enumerate the fields of a structure, or enumerate the properties of an object, or if there's no such thing (but the properties still exist obviously), then what table would be holding those (so that i can create my own functions, or classes)
Also any other discoverability tricks that you know are good... I know this question is a little generic, but since i'm new to abap, i don't really know what to ask :P
Thx, you guys rule.
If you're looking for something like reflection, take a look at RTTI. This cvers the runtime structure of most of the stuff you'll come across. If you want to find out what's going on underneath the surface of the cevelopment tools, just turn on the SQL trace (ST05), open the object in question in an editor and check what tables are accessed...
It is hard to answer your question, maybe it would be easier, if you split it up in multiple questions with some specific task you want.
Some topics I remember (please verify it, I can't check it in the moment if I remember correct):
DDIC-objects are stored in tables with DD*.
Tables (and there properties) are stored in dd02l, dd02t includes the texts. dd03l contains the fields. dd04tl contains the texts of data element.
But it will not help you, if you add something to this tables. The database in background will not get the definitions.
If you want to create some dynmaic magic you may take a look to the field-symbols and assign-command.

t() function does't add the string to the translation interface

i use customfiel php code inside one of my views to translate a string since 2.x of views is bad at localization. i use the following php code:
echo t('Watch Video');
but the string does not appear in the "translate interface" section.
thanks for your help.
lukas
The accepted answer is wrong, as the localization script is not scanning anything. The string is registered in the translate interface as soon as it gets passed through the t() function for the first time in the non-standard language.
Therefore, for translation it doesn't matter if the code you are writing is eval'd (interpreted from the database) or exists in the source. Obviously good practice would be to keep code in files where it belongs.
This blog post describes what needs to be done to get your strings into the translate interface.
The localisation database is built by scanning the source code, looking for instances of the t() function (and Drupal.t() in Javascript).
If the code in question has been entered into a text box in the Drupal admin area, then it isn't in the source code, so it won't be picked up by the localisation process.
For this reason (and others), you should put as little code as possible into the admin text boxes. There is usually an alternative way to achieve the same thing, but even if there isn't, you should reduce the code to a minimum -- best practice would be to have nothing there except a single line function call: have it call a function, and write the function code in your module or theme. That way it will be parsed when you run the localisation.

Drupal - change name of uploaded images to random alphanumeric long string

I've noticed that it is a common functionality within public sites to change the name of uploaded pictures to a long, 'random', alphanumeric string. This is good for privacy etc.
I can't find a module within Drupal that achieves this, and was wondering if it was possible. This would need to operate before modules like ImageCache.
???
I think there're no modules that does exactly what you're looking for, but i can suggest a way to achieve this using code. There's a module called filefield_paths which makes you able to change the name of imagefield files with a token, provided by the token module.
Looking into the code of this module you can see how it works and make your own small module to achieve the same result with an alphanumeric string.
In detail, the function you're looking for is here, at line 457.
I can't provide a directly working solution as I need time to write and test the code, however this is a very good starting point.

Interpreting Search Results

I am tasked with writing a program that, given a search term and the HTML source of a page representing search results of some unknown search engine (it can really be anything, a blog, a shop, Google, eBay, ...), needs to build a data structure of the results containing "what's in the results": a title for earch result, the "details" link, the position within the results etc. It is not known whether the results page contains any of the data at all, and whether there are any search results. The goal is to feed the data structure into another program that extracts meaning.
What I am looking for is not BeautifulSoup or a RegExp but rather some clever ideas or algorithms on how to interpret the HTML source. What do I do to find out what part of the page constitutes a single result item? How do I filter the markup noise to extract the important bits? What would you do? Pointers to fields of research covering what I try to to are aly greatly appreciated.
Thanks, Simon
I doubt that there exist a silver-bullet algorithm that without any training will just work on any arbitrary search query output.
However, this task can be solved and is actually solved in many applications, but with different approach. First you have to define general structure of single search result item based on what you actually going to do with it (it could be name, date, link, description snippet, etc.), and then write number of html parsers that will extract necessary necessary fields from search result output of particular web sites.
I know it is not super sexy solution, but it probably the only one that works. And it is not rocket science. Writing parsers is actually extremly simple, you can make dozen per day. If you will look into html source of search result, you will notice that output results are typically very structured and marked with specific div sections or class atributes, so it is very easy to find it in the document. You dont have even use any complicated HTML parsing library for that, something grep-like will be enough.
For example, on this particular page your question starts with <div class="post-text"> and ends with </div>. Everything in between is actually a post text with some HTML formatting that you may want to remove along with extra spaces and "\n". And this <div class="post-text"> appears on the page only once.
Once you go at large scale with your retrieval applicaiton, you will find out that there is not that big variety of different search engines on different sites, and you will be able to re-use already created parsers for sties using similar search engines.
The only thing you have to remember is built-in self-testing. Sites tend to upgrade and change design from time to time. If your application is going to live for some time, you will need to include into your parsers some logic that will check validity of their results and notify you every time search output has changed and is not compatible anymore with your parser. Then you will have to modify particular parser or write new one.
Hope this helps.

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