Automatically downloading libraries for a module

Question

I have a small module on drupal.org. Among a few other things, my module adds support for a third-party PHP library to Drupal. Users are expected to download the module to .../libraries/ and the module provides helper functions, etc.

A few days ago I had a feature request come in. Essentially, a user is asking for a way to automagically download the PHP library to .../libraries/ for use by the module.

Before I stamp this request as denied, I was curious whether there is a decent method to do this, and if there are any existing modules that already to this (so I can look at them for inspiration).

Answer 1

Views Infinite Scroll provides a Drush command to do it, so I'd start there- it sounds like a pretty simple option!

Instead of downloading jquery.autopager manually, drush could be used to download the plugin in /js directory or sites/all/libraries if libraries module is enabled.

Drush command: drush dl-autopager

The Drush include is here, but this is the important bit:

function views_infinite_scroll_drush_autopager_download() {
     if(module_exists('libraries')) {
       $path = 'sites/all/libraries/autopager';

       // Create the path if it does not exist.
       if (!is_dir($path)) {
         drush_op('mkdir', $path);
         drush_log(dt('Directory @path was created', array('@path' => $path)), 'notice');
       }
     }
     else {
       $path = drupal_get_path('module', 'views_infinite_scroll') . '/js';
     }
     drush_op('chdir', $path);
     // Download the plugin.
     if (drush_shell_exec('wget http://jquery-autopager.googlecode.com/files/jquery.autopager-1.0.0.js')) {
       drush_log(dt('jquery.autopager-1.0.0.js has been downloaded to @path', array('@path' => $path)), 'success');
     }
     else {
       drush_log(dt('Drush was unable to download jquery.autopager-1.0.0.js to @path', array('@path' => $path)), 'error');
     }
   }

Answer 2

You can use drush make to do this, but that will only work if the person downloading the module is using drush make.

In your modulename.make file:

libraries[foolib][download][type] = "get"
libraries[foolib][download][url] = "http://path.to/file/or/tarball.gz

This is only advisable if you are grabbing libraries. Adding dependent modules here currently can cause version conflicts (although many modules supply this info via a modulename.make.example file).