CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Has someone already developed such a custom token?

Yes, and I even blogged about it
http://civicrm.org/blogs/colemanw/create-your-own-tokens-fun-and-profit

In wordpress the easiest thing is to place it in your theme's functions.php file. And instead of calling the functions hook_civicrm_tokens and hook_civicrm_tokenValues you would rename them wordpress_civicrm_tokens wordpress_civicrm_tokenValues.
Note that hooks can only be defined once, but you can put as much code as you want in them, so you notice that in the blog article there are 3 code examples and they all declare hook_civicrm_tokenValues. In real life you would only name the function once and all the code would go in there.
And yes, adding new tokens will cause them to show up in the list.
If this is your first time working with hooks I recommend putting some debug statements into the code so you can see the values being passed into the functions and understand what's going on - much less like shooting in the dark that way.

. Anyway, where should the hooks go in a Drupal installation of civicrm. Thanks for your help!

You make a module as per: http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC40/CiviCRM+hook+specification#CiviCRMhookspecification-Proceduresforimplementinghooks%28forDrupal%29

Okay, I tried it and failed. I created a Ne directory called civiNicknameToken in: /home/lifechal/www/data/sites/all/modules. In it I put a .info file and a .module file, both named civiNicknameToken. Here is the code for the module:
<?php
/**
implements hook_tokenValues
*/

function civiNicknameToken_tokenValues(&$values, $cids, $job = null, $tokens = array(), $context = null) {
  $contacts = implode(',', $cids);
  $tokens += array(
    'contact' => array(),
  );

  // Fill first name and nick name with default values
  if (in_array('first_name', $tokens['contact']) || in_array('nick_name', $tokens['contact'])) {
    $dao = &CRM_Core_DAO::executeQuery("
      SELECT first_name, nick_name, contact_type, id
      FROM civicrm_contact
      WHERE id IN ($contacts)"
    );
    while ($dao->fetch()) {
      $cid = $dao->id;
      if (!($values[$cid]['first_name'] = $dao->first_name)) {
        $values[$cid]['first_name'] = $dao->contact_type == 'Individual' ? 'Friend' : 'Friends';
      }
      if (empty($values[$cid]['nick_name']) || $dao->contact_type != 'Individual') {
        $values[$cid]['nick_name'] = $values[$cid]['first_name'];
      }
    }
  }
}

And here is the code fore the .info:

name = Smart Nickname
description = Creates token to default to first_name if nick_name is missing, or "friend" if no name for contact.
dependencies[] = civicrm
package = CiviCRM
core = 7.x
version = 1.0
I don't fine this token in the dropdown lists of Tokens available. You mentioned earlier that I am getting a js ckeditor error somewhere. Could that be why? the module shows up as exxpected in the module admin area and it is enabled...thoughts?