sirkitree.net //say it out loud, [sur-ki-tree]

There's a new system for creating buddy lists on your site. It's light weight and dependent upon Flag module. It's called Flag Friend.

While there are already a couple of modules out there that provide a user relationship or buddy list functionality, I was tasked to come up with a bare minimum system that utilized our current setup without adding a lot of overhead. I had already replaced Views Bookmark and Flag Content with Flag module on our platform and there had already been mention of the concept of reciprocity for flags to come up with a way to create an authorized relationship system using Flag module's API, so I dove in.

Challenges

If you understand Flag module, it's actually quite simple in concept; simply create an entry that says this user "flagged" this piece of content. Currently you can flag nodes, comments and users. With the ability to flag users already in place, the only thing I really had to do was implement a way for users to send a message with the user flag (or friend request), notify a user that they were flagged and by whom, provide a mechanism for approving or denying this relationship, and then either record the relationship or remove the flag (unflag).

Send a Message

Once we got the ability to have "link types" for our flags, we also received the ability to send other data along with our flags. This is accomplished in the Flag Friend module, by first setting the link type to "confirm" which sends our user to a confirmation form when they use our flag. Since we have a confirmation form, we can then use hook_form_alter() to provide our users with a text area for typing in an optional message to send along with this flag/friend request as well as an additional submit handler to save this data to our {flag_friend_message} table.

Notify the User

This is handled by a couple different means. First of all, an email can be sent to the user if they so choose to be notified in this manner. If you have Messaging and Notifications installed in your system, the email will be queued to go out on the next cron run. Otherwise the standard drupal_mail() is run. There is also a persistent drupal_set_message() that is displayed when you have a pending friend request.

Approve or Deny

Flag friend provides a menu callback to user/N/friends which will show you two things. First, a list of pending friends (if there are any) and second, a list of all of your approved friendships (again, if you have any). Within the Pending list there is a link to Approve the flag/friend request or Deny it. The approval process allows you to send a message back to that user (email only) and then flags that user. The addition submit handler that is form_altered in then checks the status of the friend relationship, and if both users have each other flagged, the relationship is recorded in our {flag_friend} table and the flags are removed from the flag system. If denied, we simply remove the flag (unflag).

The Future of Flag Friend

I can see the need for a full settings form coming into play, as well as some token implementation and maybe allowing the email template functions to be presented in text areas for users without theming skills to manipulate. But they'll come as the feature request start rolling in, assuming they do. ;) The D6 version will also be coming within the next couple of weeks as we migrate our whole platform to D6. So keep an eye out.

- Update -

The 6.x version has been released and includes some nifty views integration.

Quick Links

• Flag module
• Flag Friend module
• Screenshots (Pending) (Send message)