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| title | date | permalink | tags | cta | snippet | drupal_planet | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revisiting the Null Object pattern in Drupal | 2024-08-30 | daily/2024/08/30/revisiting-the-null-object-pattern-in-drupal |
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~ | Whilst working on my secret side project, today I decided to revisit the Null User Drupal module. | true |
The Null Object pattern is one of my favourite ways to DRY up code and reduce duplication.
I wrote the System User module for a client project a number of years ago, which also included the Null User module.
If no system user is found, it returns a null (empty) user instead that returns null or empty values by default.
Today, I posted and tooted a screenshot of some code from a side project I'm working on, which I realised would be another good time to use the Null User module.
In the code, I search for a user with a given licence key.
If a user is found, it is returned.
If not, instead of returning FALSE or NULL, I return a null user object that I can treat the same as a real user.
Now, when I create the node and assign an owner, I can just use $account->id() and it will always work if a user was found or not.
This makes the code cleaner, simpler and easier to test and maintain.