Article for conference booklet:
The Drupal 6.x menu system has a fundamentally different architecture from what was present in Drupal 5.x. This session is designed to highlight the key features of the new system, give some some detailed code examples, and maybe a little flavor of Drupal Tough Love as we scour the current contributed modules for examples of ugly, broken, or just-plain-wrong menu code.
We will discuss how does Drupal 6 serves paths and render links. These two functions are now decoupled,however the fact that some links are created automatically creates a potentially confusing appearance of unity. We will discuss the different menu hooks and when they are invoked, and spend some time on the features and limitations of what you can define for a router item using hook_menu.
You should be familiar with writing a hook_menu implementation and preferably the {menu_router} and {menu_links} tables to get the most of this session. Much of the content of this session will be code examples and explorations of core code. By the end we hope to help you throw off the shackles of your Drupal-5.x-based thinking about the menu system and be ready to use the features and be aware of the limitations of the Drupal 6.x menu system.
Bios for conference booklet:
Peter Wolanin, known as pwolanin on drupal.org, has been contributing to Drupal core since 2005 and recently joined Acquia as a senior engineer (Momentum Specialist). Prior to that, Peter earned his Ph.D. in Physics and did biophysics and molecular biology research. Peter worked with Károly to write several of the new pieces of the Drupal 6 menu system, and also re-wrote the Drupal 6 Book module to use the new menu API.
Károly Négyesi, better known in Drupal circles as chx, has been a core developer since 2004 and developer team lead of NowPublic. He currently maintains (and wrote significant parts of) the form API subsystem and the menu subsytem. The community sometimes accuses him of not sleeping, to which he answered "I code core to be high without resorting to harmful drugs". Thus, the community thinks he can not be distracted, and runs http://chxcannotbedistracted.com which he finds very amusing.
Current Conditions:
Stay informed with the Drupalcon Szeged blog feed. Our most important news also appears on Planet Drupal and you can get updates through Twitter. Socialize with attendees on the #drupalcon IRC channel on irc.freenode.net.
As what seems like the
As what seems like the biggest difference between developing for D5 or developing for D6, I am looking forward to this session.