How do I Programmatically Output Custom Paths for Drupal Node Links (w/o PathAuto)?

Question

I would like to be able to programmatically change the outputted path to a Drupal node without using the PathAuto module. We currently process a large volume of content (thousands of articles per day) that get added on the back-end. Rather than use PathAuto to generate path aliases, I would like to have Drupal output the default link but append a partial title for better SEO.

An example of this would be:

/node/123

would be changed to

/node/123/This-is-the-article-title (this path currently will work for the existing node)

I understand how to do this on a theme-basis, by modifying the theme/view templates, but I would like to do it so that anytime the link to the node is displayed anywhere, it adds the title plug.

In addition, I would like to limit it to a certain content type (e.g., 'article').

I am using Drupal 5.x and I would prefer not to use PathAuto (I don't want to store hundreds of thousands of path aliases if not necessary)

I am looking for a solution that does not use PathAuto

Answer 1

Drupal has an internal mechanism for mapping from "/node/1234/" to "/blogs/look-at-what-my-cat-just-did". It's part of the core system, and used almost everywhere, on every request, without you even having to ask. It's fast enough you'll almost never notice it happening - there's plenty of other things in drupal that are -far- slower.

If you're concerned about how URLs are being displayed on the front-end - you should be using the url() function (and filters that do the same with node content) to handle look-ups going the other way.

Where Pathauto comes in is that, when you create or edit content, it will generate a number of entries in Drupal's url_alias table (based on whatever pathauto rules you've created). This is a one-time cost. Unless you're generating content at an astronomical rate - there is a negligible cost associated with doing this.

You're already paying the cost of looking up URL aliases by simply using Drupal. Without hacking core, you can't really avoid it. Storing "hundreds of thousands of path aliases" in the database isn't that big of a deal - if you break that down into the actual storage requirements, you're only looking at a handful of megabytes. Since the table's well indexed, look-ups will be virtually instantaneous. This is core functionality & happens regardless of Pathauto even being on your system.

Unless you have some very odd requirements for the types of URLs you want to map your nodes to, anything you do will simply be recreating a subset of Pathauto's existing functionality (and likely introducing a bunch of new bugs).

Answer 2

Although Pathauto probably is the best choice, you can use the hook_menu function to mount a URL to a method. That method could programmatically find the node you want based on the URL.

Answer 3

You could try using these two functions:

http://api.drupal.org/api/function/custom_url_rewrite_outbound http://api.drupal.org/api/function/custom_url_rewrite_inbound

But really, Pathauto is the "right" way to do this.