The Freelinking module has been around since the Drupal 4.7 days. It’s time that for the current module to go away, and time for a fresh start. This process is now underway.

Freelinking 3 is a complete rewrite, from the ground up — from line 1. Version 3 will have fewer features in some areas, and more in others. At least initially; as with most open source projects it will go where its community takes it.

The biggest feature going away is the database table of links. I never really liked this idea; I added it early on because a user asked for it. It’s always been trouble. I’ve never thought it was necessary. I am not happy with its implementation. It’s going away. People needing that functionality are better off sticking with version 1 or 2 of the module.

The biggest feature being added is plugins. Freelinking 3 will have a plugin architecture that will allow links of many different kinds to be added, not just node titles as with the current versions of the module. It’s very simple to define a freelinking plugin. And FL3 will be eating its own dog food — the linking of node titles is itself a plugin in the new version.

The plugin system allows freelinking to handle interwiki-type links. There is an interwiki module for Drupal, but it has not been updated in nine months or so, and the current 6.x beta doesn’t work for new installations, only for upgrades. I will talk to the current maintainer of interwiki before FL3 gets released, to see if the efforts can be consolidated.

But that’s not all that FL3 plugins are good for. The plugins have full control of the replacement text, so if a plugin wants to check if a node exists by title through an SQL query, or call drupal_http_request() to get the title of a node on another site by nid, it can do that. If a plugin would just rather take text and append it to a url, it can do that, too. I’ll go over the plugin format in a separate blog entry.

Of course, FL3 will be ready “when it’s ready,” for Drupal 6 and 7. I’m not ready to commit any code to the contrib repository, but hopefully I’ll do a check in soon.

As to what will happen to freelinking 1 and 2, it remains to be seen. I’ve been lax with the issue queue, and user toemaz has agreed to be co-maintainer and is working through the queue with great ferocity. They’ll stick around as long as there is a need. But FL3 is the future, at least for me.