One of the assumptions regularly made is that libraries, like getid3 or Zend, live within the Drupal directory structure. The popular pattern is to put them in the libraries directory alongside the modules and themes directories. This is very limited both in workflow and accessibility to libraries. What if a developer wants to have a library in the PHP include path so multiple sites, not all of which are Drupal, can share it? What if someone wants to use Pear to manage that library? Let's take a look at a quick pattern for providing for a wide variety of possible locations for libraries. Read more »

When I use the same library or framework on many sites being able to manage and reuse the code for it across the different projects and tinkerings makes development that much faster and easier. Instead of dealing with the code management I can work with using the code. This is the case when I use the Zend Framework. So, instead of downloading and installing it each time I use it I installed it one time and use it everywhere with Pear. Read more »

There are more and more cases to use external libraries with Drupal. They may be jQuery plugins, CSS libraries, or PHP libraries already providing some form or function we want to use. But, so often we can't include then on drupal.org because of policy issues or there may be multiple modules wanting to use the same libraries which can cause collisions. Here are 3 tips for easily working with outside libraries. Read more »