Drupal 7 Module Development

Chapter 5
The Drupal menu system
Drupal's menu system is deceptively named. The name implies that it is responsible
for the navigation of your site, and while this is true it does a great deal more. At its
core, the menu system is responsible for mapping Drupal paths to the functions that
generate the contents of the requested page. The menu system is also responsible
for controlling access to Drupal pages, acting as one of the central gatekeepers of
Drupal security.
Drupal module developers can map paths to Drupal functions by implementing
hook_menu(), which adds paths to the menu system, assigns them access rules,
and optionally creates navigational elements for them.
Defining a page callback with hook_menu
For our module we will need to implement two new pages—a configuration page
for the User Warn module, and a tab in the user profile area where administrators
can go to send the actual e-mails to a specific user. These will each require their own
hook_menu() implementation as defined in the following example.
This example only scratches the surface of the options available in the
menu system. For more details, developers should check out the API
documentation at:
http://api.drupal.org/api/function/hook_menu/7
The example is as follows:
/**
* Implement hook_menu().
*/
function user_warn_menu() {
$items = array();
$items['admin/config/people/user_warn'] = array(
'title' => 'User Warn',
'description' => 'Configuration for the User Warn module.',
'page callback' => 'drupal_get_form',
'page arguments' => array('user_warn_form'),
'access arguments' => array('administer users'),
'type' => MENU_NORMAL_ITEM,
);
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