Whenever I work with a significant framework or off-the-shelf software, I invariably encounter situations in which I need to do “one-off” programmatic batch tasks outside the normal flow of the application.

Today, I will explore how to do some programmatic manipulation of Drupal (specifically Drupal 6, although this approach is very similar in Drupal 5) showing specific examples to get you started creating your own scripts.

I recently built a new site using the Blueprint CSS framework and was once again astounded by how little time I spent on fussing with the design of the site and how much I actually enjoyed the process–something that just didn’t happen before I started using Blueprint.

In one of my earliest blog posts, I described an approach to customizing a search form that I employ on many of my sites. Instead of having a search form that consists of three elements: a label, text input field, and submit button, I like to reduce everything to just the text field with the label inside it, as you can see on the right hand column of this very blog. This frees up room, and requires less mouse work on the part of the user.

I originally saw this basic functionality on the Mambo CMS site, and because I don’t like to needlessly duplicate work (otherwise known as laziness), I decided to completely and shamelessly rip off their source.

More recently, however, I have been using jQuery and have been moving toward implementing Javascript unobtrusively, and so, I decided to explore re-implementing this approach accordingly.