call_user_func() and external functions problem

Question

I'm trying to create some logic in order to have my code better organized, so I am creating a module and trying to separate functions in different files according to it's content type.

For example, I have a module called my_module and I'm creating two content_types content_type1 and content_type2

So I created this structure:

• my_module.install
• my_module.module
• my_module.content_type1.inc
• my_module.content_type2.inc

This logic inside install:

function my_module_install() {
  // During installation, the t() function is unavailable, so we use get_t()
  // to store the name of the translation function.
  $t = get_t();

  //List of objects to be created
  $nodes = array('content_type1','content_type2');

  //Create all the content-types from the array
  foreach ($nodes as &$node_name) {
    error_log('Create: '.$node_name, 0);
    call_user_func('_'.$node_name.'_create_node',$node_name);
  }

  unset($node_name);   
}

And this logic inside each file ( content_types )

function _content_type1_create_node($node_name='type1') {}

function _content_type2_create_node($node_name='type2') {}

Since I added this lines to the my_module.info:

files[] = my_module.content_type1.inc
files[] = my_module.content_type2.inc

I was expecting to have all the logic working as it should but

//content_type1_create_node()
call_user_func('_' . $node_name . '_create_node', $node_name);

It cannot find the callback and I think it's because the callback.

Am I over engineering, or doing it wrong?

Answer 1

Your functions are in files that haven't yet been included, try changing your code to this:

foreach ($nodes as &$node_name) {
  module_load_include('inc', 'my_module', 'my_module.' . $node_name);

  $func = '_'.$node_name.'_create_node';
  if (function_exists($func)) {
    call_user_func($func, $node_name);
  }
}

I've never been able to get the files[] key in the .info file to work, I don't think it's used for arbitrary files but rather those that will form part of Drupal's code registry (using hook_hook_info() or something like that), but I haven't delved too deeply so it's worth checking yourself.

To answer your final question, yes I think you're over-engineering this a bit :)

It would make sense to do this if your module is going to become generic (so more content types can be catered for) but if it's really just 2 content types I'd put the code inside the .module file to be honest.

Obviously if you think these files will end up having a lot of code it makes sense to separate them, but if not I don't think you're really getting much benefit for doing so.