making profile.module appear in places it doesn't want to

Out of all the modules in Drupal Core, Profile has always seemed me to be the most half-assed. It's clear that something needs to happen to it — using CCK field types at the least, maybe removing profile data from the user object, and, if I had my way, permanently node-ifying users. I haven't poked around Drupal 6 as thoroughly as I ought to, but based upon what I've heard from Phil's writeup and the Lullabot podcast, I may have to wait a bit longer to see meaningful change come to Profile.

So others may find themselves in the situation I did yesterday for a bit longer: trying to embed a profile form somewhere that Profile.module doesn't think it ought to go — for instance, yesterday I needed to let users edit their name and address on their user_profile page, rather than expecting them to mess around with a bunch of tabs and only-vaguely-different categories.

You'd think there'd be a way to call drupal_get_form() to collect your users' addresses and names whereever you might care to. But you'd be wrong, so far as I can tell — profile.module acts as a user.module parasite, accomplishing what it does through hook_user() and the abuse of arg().

But it's very easy to re-wrap Profile's form-generating functions in your own module and then call drupal_get_form() against it. Here's the example that I came up with:

/* 
WRAPPER FUNCTIONS FOR PROFILE.MODULE FORM 

The profile form is usually only available on the user editing form.
Some wrapper functions are necessary to make it work elsewhere.
*/
function mymodule_profile_form($user,$category)
{
	if(module_exists('profile'))
	{
		$user = user_load(array('uid' => $user->uid));
	
		$edit = array();
		foreach($user as $key => $value)

			if(preg_match('/^profile_/',$key))
				$edit[$key] = $value;		
		
		$form = profile_form_profile($edit, $user, $category);
				
		// now let's pretend we're in hook_form_alter							
		
		// add a submit button
		$form['op'] = array
		(
			'#type' => 'submit',
			'#value' => t('Submit'),
		);
		
		// pass along the $category parameter as a hidden value
		$form['category'] = array
		(
			'#type' => 'hidden',
			'#value' => $category,
		);
		
		return $form;
	}
}

function mymodule_profile_form_validate($form_id,$form_values)
{
	if(module_exists('profile'))
	{
		/* do any necessary custom validation here */ 
		
		return profile_validate_profile($form_values, $form_values['category']);	
	}
}

function mymodule_profile_form_submit($form_id,$form_values)
{	
	global $user;
	if(module_exists('profile'))
	{
		$r = profile_save_profile($form_values, $user, $form_values['category']);

		// reload the user with the newly-saved info
		$user = user_load(array('uid' => $user->uid));

		return $r;
	}
}

You can call all of this with a simple drupal_get_form('mymodule_profile_form','Personal Information') — if "Personal Information" is the profile category that you wish to get a form for.

Of course, what'd be really nice is for profile.module to provide wrapper functions like this natively. Maybe there's another way to skin this cat, but at the moment I think this is the option that users are facing.