title: Create multiple CCK nodes with single custom form in Drupal
body: <p>I need a form which will allow creation of several related nodes at the same time. All of the nodes involve CCK fields.</p>
  
  <p>I would like to use as much of CCK's built-in validation, submission, input widget, and security functionality as possible/practical.</p>
  
  <p>What is the best way to accomplish this in Drupal 6? Are there 'best practices' or docs anywhere?</p>
  
  <p>Here are 3 possibilities I can see. I would love feedback on whether any of these would work, or if there are even better options.</p>
  
  <h3>1.</h3>
  
  <ul>
  <li>start with the standard node creation form for content type foo.</li>
  <li>modify the form by adding fields for content type bar, using hook form_alter [can cck widgets for content type bar be inserted directly?]</li>
  <li>use a custom submit handler to create node of type bar when the form is submitted
   [can the standard cck handler be called? or do i need to 'manually' construct the node object, do my own validation, and use node_save?]</li>
  </ul>
  
  <h3>2.</h3>
  
  <ul>
  <li>create a new, custom form that concatenates the 'normal' node creation forms for the relevant content types.</li>
  <li>then use hook form_alter to modify the forms as necessary.</li>
  <li>allow standard cck submit handlers to do the work of creating the nodes.</li>
  </ul>
  
  <h3>3.</h3>
  
  <ul>
  <li>create a custom form from scratch</li>
  <li>create the nodes in my own submit handlers, using node prepare, node save, etc.</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>If found <a href="http://www.agileapproach.com/blog-entry/extreme-form-handling-drupal" rel="nofollow noreferrer">documentation on re-using the standard node creation form</a>, but creating multiple nodes at the same time is not mentioned.</p>
  
  <p>Using hook nodeapi and hook form_alter is documented in a post on advomatic's site, but the particular method descrube seems to require polluting one of the content types with 'dummy' fields.</p>
  
  <p>Thank you very much for your help!</p>