Drupal - Is it better to use module_invoke_all(), or module_invoke() and module_implements()?
There is little difference; module_invoke_all()
runs the following code:
function module_invoke_all() {
$args = func_get_args();
$hook = $args[0];
unset($args[0]);
$return = array();
foreach (module_implements($hook) as $module) {
$function = $module . '_' . $hook;
if (function_exists($function)) {
$result = call_user_func_array($function, $args);
if (isset($result) && is_array($result)) {
$return = array_merge_recursive($return, $result);
}
elseif (isset($result)) {
$return[] = $result;
}
}
}
return $return;
}
The only difference is that with module_invoke_all()
, for example, func_get_args()
is invoked only once, while when using module_invoke()
func_get_args()
is called each time module_invoke()
is called; that is a marginal difference, though.
There are a few cases where module_implementing()
and module_invoke()
are used, normally when a module needs to know which module is invoked, such as in the case of search_get_info()
that builds an array of information about the modules implementing search functions.
function search_get_info($all = FALSE) {
$search_hooks = &drupal_static(__FUNCTION__);
if (!isset($search_hooks)) {
foreach (module_implements('search_info') as $module) {
$search_hooks[$module] = call_user_func($module . '_search_info');
// Use module name as the default value.
$search_hooks[$module] += array(
'title' => $module,
'path' => $module,
);
// Include the module name itself in the array.
$search_hooks[$module]['module'] = $module;
}
}
if ($all) {
return $search_hooks;
}
$active = variable_get('search_active_modules', array('node', 'user'));
return array_intersect_key($search_hooks, array_flip($active));
}
Another example is image_styles(), which gets the list of all the image styles implemented by the modules, and that uses the following code:
foreach (module_implements('image_default_styles') as $module) {
$module_styles = module_invoke($module, 'image_default_styles');
foreach ($module_styles as $style_name => $style) {
$style['name'] = $style_name;
$style['module'] = $module;
$style['storage'] = IMAGE_STORAGE_DEFAULT;
foreach ($style['effects'] as $key => $effect) {
$definition = image_effect_definition_load($effect['name']);
$effect = array_merge($definition, $effect);
$style['effects'][$key] = $effect;
}
$styles[$style_name] = $style;
}
}
In both the cases, the retrieved information is put in an array where the index is the short name of the module.
When you have a look at the code, module_invoke_all does just that, plus a couple of sanity checks. And it is easy. :-)