Internet Commons

One way to view Drupal is as a state-transition machine. This has the benefit of affording a structured way to document the complexity of the system.

Drupal consists of a number of key objects, which are evolving into implementations of entities:

• user object (note that ->data property may be persistent)
• node object
• comment object
• taxonomy object

Data structures in Drupal can be class instances (typically simple objects), arrays, or simple data types. Arrays are often associative arrays, whereby keys that begin with a hash (#) are considered to be attributes, and keys without a hash are considered to be data.

The array conventions can be considered a kind of data grammar driven by transitions.

The drupal hook mechanism can be considered a state transition mechanism.

Drupal cookbook and ingredient guidelines

Setup: 20-Apr-2013 [210]