[Lancaster] Lancaster Library

[andy baxter]

Richard Robinson wrote:
> While I've mentioned it, Andy - do you have the hang of Drupal's system of
> nodes ? I've not used it, or looked at it; I'm just acquiring data from
> outside and having the php display it, but I suspect there might be
> advantages if I reworked it to put that code inside their node callbacks (or
> integrate it otherwise) - is that something you can comment on ?
>
>   
The basic idea is just that everything (apart from users) is a node, so 
a module that (e.g.) allows comments on static pages will also work for 
any other page without any messing about.

I don't know much about how nodes work internally. I think the idea is 
that there is one database tables called nodes, which has the most basic 
information connected with every node - e.g. node id, title, user id, 
node type, modified date etc. Then any extra info which is relevant to 
the specific type of node (e.g. forum post) is kept in a separate table 
and referenced back to the nodes table with an id. It's a bit like 
subclassing in object oriented languages. Can't help much beyond that.

There is a good API reference on the drupal site, so you could start by 
browsing around that a bit?

andy