Drupal way to edit site variables

Question

what's the best way to go about to hacking core variables? I need to edit a few values in Drupal core's common.inc, for instance:

  'name' => 'Generator',
  'content' => 'Drupal ' . $version . ' (http://drupal.org)',

and also in user.pages.inc

$timeout = variable_get('user_password_reset_timeout', 86400);

but if I update drupal core, these values will return. Is there a "Drupal way" of editing these values so that I don't have to do that every time?

Thanks.

Answer 1

You should not edit core code, ever.

For variables (set with variable_set) can try using something like strongarm module, or you can override using $conf in settings.php:

 /**
 * Variable overrides:
 *
 * To override specific entries in the 'variable' table for this site,
 * set them here. You usually don't need to use this feature. This is
 * useful in a configuration file for a vhost or directory, rather than
 * the default settings.php. Any configuration setting from the 'variable'
 * table can be given a new value. Note that any values you provide in
 * these variable overrides will not be modifiable from the Drupal
 * administration interface.
 *
 * The following overrides are examples:
 * - site_name: Defines the site's name.
 * - theme_default: Defines the default theme for this site.
 * - anonymous: Defines the human-readable name of anonymous users.
 * Remove the leading hash signs to enable.
 */
 $conf['site_name'] = 'My Drupal site';
 $conf['theme_default'] = 'garland';
 $conf['anonymous'] = 'Visitor';

This documentation is from default.settings.php.

Answer 2

To your first question, you can change the meta tag like this inside template.php

function YOURTHEME_html_head_alter(&$head_elements) {
  $head_elements['system_meta_generator']['#attributes']['content']= // whatever you want
}

To the second, you could create a form that changes the variable along these lines:

function YOURMODULE_admin_settings_form() {

  $form=array();

  $form['user_password_reset_timeout'] = array(
    '#type' => 'textfield',
    '#title' => t('User Password Reset Timeout'),
    '#default_value' => variable_get('user_password_reset_timeout', 86400),
    '#size' => 28,
    '#maxlength' => 8,
    '#description' => t('Enter the number of seconds for the user password reset timeout'),
  );

  return system_settings_form($form);

}

and then use that in a menu:

function YOURMODULE_menu() {

  $items=array();

  $items['admin/settings/YOURMODULE'] = array(
    'title' => 'YOURMODULE Admininstration',
    'page callback' => 'drupal_get_form',
    'page arguments' => array('YOURMODULE_admin_settings_form'),
    'access callback' => 'user_access',
    'access arguments' => array('APPROPRIATE_PERMISSION_ON_YOUR_SYSTEM'),
  );

  // other menu items go here

  return $items;

}