How do I extend a contributed module in Drupal?

drupal drupal-6 drupal-modules
apnerve picture apnerve · Oct 27, 2009 · Viewed 10.1k times · Source

How can I extend an existing module without modifying it? Actually its a contributed module, so I don't want to hack it. But I want to alter and add certain features to it. I'm new to drupal and as I read tutorials about it, I keep hearing one thing again and again - Don't hack the core... and I believe the same applies for modules too.

Answer

Grayside picture Grayside · Oct 27, 2009

Avoid hacking or forking the module if at all possible. Hacking the module gives you a lesser variety of the "hacking core" pain, and forking the module (without a distinctly superior architecture and feature set.) just muddies the module water further- making it even more difficult for sitebuilders to make an effective decision about what to use.

The best solutions are:

  1. Use any API provided by the module. Sometimes there are functions you can use as API calls that are not necessarily intended that way.
  2. Create the additional functionality and submit a patch to the module issue queue, so others may benefit from your work, and so you may benefit from security audits without much sweat.
  3. Not always, but often you can go far creating a custom module that implements hook_form_alter and adds a submit handler that leads back to your module for processing.

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