VotingAPI and actions: Major improvements

One of the major VotingAPI improvements that's been in the pipeline for a while is an overhaul of integration with the Actions module. At present, the voting_actions module is used to set up specific vote results that will trigger things like promoting a node to the front page, or unpublishing it. There are some problems with the approach, though. First, there was no way for module authors to provide 'built-in' voting actions. Everything had to be set up by users. Second, there was no way to make decisions about action execution based on the content rather than the vote. In other words, polls need 10 votes to be promoted, but stories need 15. Third, there's really no reason that the functionality should be in a separate module -- actions integration should be exposed as an API for module writers, and should be tweakable by users who want more customization. It's a bit like the Views module philosophy: modules can expose default bviews, but users can make their own or override the defaults. To that end, the new VotingAPI actions system has been re-written. All the core code IS present, though the end-user UI for creating and overriding actions is still being written.

To give an idea of how the system works, here's a snippet of code from a development version of SimpleVote:

function simplevote_votingapi_action_sets() {
  $sets = array(
    'simplevote_promotion' => array(
      'name' => 'SimpleVote promotion',
      'content_type' => 'node',
      'mask' => 'AND',
      'enabled' => 1,
      'source' => 'SimpleVote',
      'conditions' => array(
        array(
          'description' => 'Node is not promoted',
          'handler' => 'votingapi_node_properties_handler',
          'value' => array(
            'property' => 'promote',
            'comparison' => '!=',
            'value' => 1,
          ),
        ),
        array(
          'description' => 'More than 5 voters',
          'handler' => 'votingapi_vote_result_handler',
          'value' => array(
            'function' => 'count',
            'tag' => 'vote',
            'comparison' => '>',
            'value' => 5,
          ),
        ),
        array(
          'description' => 'Average higher than 75',
          'handler' => 'votingapi_vote_result_handler',
          'value' => array(
            'function' => 'average',
            'tag' => 'vote',
            'comparison' => '>',
            'value' => 75,
          ),
        ),
      ),
      'actions' => array(
        'action_node_promote',
      ),
    ),
  );
 
  return $sets;
}

That snippet registers an action that will promote to the front page any nodes that receive an average vote of 75 or higher AND have been voted on by at least five people AND have not already been promoted. (The last condition is just to avoid watchdog spam and unecessary db work). No user intervention is necessary to set this up, other than enabling votingapi and simplevote.

There's a lot more to it than that -- modules can register their own criteria handlers for custom condition checking, and it's possible to nest action sets for advanced conditional branching. But the path is clear, and progress is being made. Are there any thoughts from users and module developers? Requests or comments?

Sound off!