[This blog post is a rewrite of just the main points due to my baby Macbook Pro dying while I was distracted.]

Drupal content types with CCK make it quite easy to add any number of defined fields to an 'object', and with multiple/unlimited values for a field or with node references it's possible to make a Drupal node 'two-dimensional'.

Sometimes you need more. Sometimes you want tabular data, a table, to be part of a node. If the table always has the same dimensions, and at least the same columns for each node, then the above can work through node references and views.

What if you want to add a different two-dimensional table to nodes of a content type, but without knowing the number or labels for the columns and rows beforehand.  For example, you might want to attach a pricing table to a node, with multiple products and multiple ways to price each product.  An example of that might be 5 t-shirt designs, where shirts are priced based on size and quantity ordered.

Drupal 6 allows you to either display the comment form below saved comments or on a separate page. There's surprisingly no way to configure the form to appear above the comments. It's hard-coded at the bottom of comment_render to either append the form, or not at all.

There's a micro-module aptly titled 'Comment form above comments' which does the job but does so using string replaces on resulting html so it's not the ideal or elegant solution.

It turns out to be simple to get the same effect in code.

First, we need to "configure" the form to appear on a separate page, but only because we're going to manually show it. You can ensure this configuration with the line:

variable_set('comment_form_location_'.$node->type, COMMENT_FORM_SEPARATE_PAGE);

You could even variable_get and re-variable_set after printing the form if you really wanted to.

Next, output the following where you want to display comments, whether in a PHP code block or node template:

$edit = array('nid' => $node->nid);
print comment_form_box($edit) . comment_render($node);

Another recent discovery was that the comment form is hard-coded to redirect to /node after submitting. This hack, as a module, will get you back to the page you submitted from:

function noredirect_comment_form_submit(&$form, &$form_state) {
    $form_state['redirect'] = ltrim($form['#action'], '/');
}

function noredirect_form_alter(&$form, $form_state, $form_id) {
    if ($form_id == 'comment_form') {
       $form['#action'] = request_uri();
        $form['#submit'][] = 'noredirect_comment_form_submit';
    }
}

Getting Drupal to stream video using PHP and the FlashVideo module to manage video uploads is not easy. It involves 5 distinct pieces of software, which means 5 places where things could go wrong with little error logging.

Here's what you need:
1. FlashVideo http://drupal.org/project/flashvideo
2. ffmpeg
3. flvtool2
4. xmoov-php
5. JW Player

Attachments: 

656-2178-legoshay_656.flv

stream.php_.txt

flashvideo_streaming.patch