Talking Drupal Talking Drupal #510 - Drupal Hooks: Drop 'em like they're hot
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Jul 7, 2025 Károly Negyesi, known as Chx, is a veteran Drupal contributor with over 21 years of experience. In this discussion, Chx delves into the evolution of Drupal hooks, explaining their transition from procedural to object-oriented programming. He addresses the challenges developers face and shares insights on the Media Folders module, which enhances media organization using a hierarchical structure. The conversation emphasizes community collaboration and the ongoing efforts to document changes, balancing innovation with backward compatibility in the Drupal ecosystem.
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What Drupal Hooks Actually Are
- Hooks are a simple Drupal mechanism where modules implement named functions to alter core behavior.
- They act like events: Drupal asks "I'm about to do X, do you want to change it?" and runs matching functions.
Why Convert Hooks To OOP
- Moving hooks to object-oriented code was driven mainly by dependency injection and easier replacement of behavior.
- OOP isn't intrinsically superior, but PHP's tooling for classes enabled practical improvements.
Autowiring Was The Enabler
- Autowiring services in core (around 10.2) made object-oriented hooks feasible without heavy boilerplate.
- Autowiring lets services be dependency-injected automatically, keeping implementations slim.