Simple Hook To Allow Adding Arbitrary Links Into the Contact Summary (Basic.tpl) Template

We needed to add some additional UI to the contact summary page for a customer. Rather than simply hack it into Basic.tpl, I've implemented a simple callback hook that lets any module add links to the line above the activity links that now appear.

Here's the signature of the hook:

/**

• Rob's hook for getting into the basic template
  *
• @param string $op
• @param int $contact_id
  *
• @return array
  */
  function hook_civicrm_links($op, $contact_id) { $links = array(); $links[] = array('icon' => url('misc/favicon.ico'), 'title' => t('Drupalify Contact'), 'href' => url("civinode/contact/$contact_id") ); return $links; }

This is dead easy to implement for the end users, and makes it possible for us to do things like "Create a Drupal account for this user", or "purchase a gift for this user via the ecommerce module".

I've implemented the hook, modified the Basic view template, and a small Smarty template that draws the icons in the same style as ActivityLinks.tpl. A new CRM_Utils_Hook::links does the work (implemented for Drupal, stubbed for Mambo and SOAP).

// let the user frameworks add some links to the page
$uf_links = CRM_Utils_Hook::links( 'view', $this->_contactId );
if ( $uf_links )

{ $defaults['hook_civicrm_links'] = $uf_links; }

It would make a few of us pretty happy if this or something like it gets into 1.5.

Thanks,
Rob