Modular Separation - PHP5 (Modules)

[eluser]theprodigy[/eluser]

Is there currently any built-in method with the system to return a list of available modules?

I’m trying to figure out a way to create a sort of user-side pick-and-choose module manager, so that if I have a module for an RSS feed and a module for a mailing list, user A can opt for the RSS, user B can opt for the mailing list, and user C can go with both, but I need to know that the modules exist first to give them the choice.

The way I've handled this before was to keep track of everything in the database. You can build a "modules" table, with columns for name, folder_name, and active.

The difference between name and folder_name are:
Name: Human readable
Folder_name: the actual module folder name

This is so you can give your users options for 'RSS' and "Maillist", but name your modules 'rssfeed' and 'mail_list'.

The active column is a boolean field, so you can turn access to your modules on and off.

If you don't want to go the database route, the only other options I can think of is to do a scandir of the modules directory, then loop through the returned array using is_dir to make sure the current element is a directory, and not a file (make sure you also check for '.' and '..').