Advanced

With all the complex configuration options of Drupal, the Configuration Management system allows you to keep track of your configuration and move configuration changes between several development environments with ease. Its API allows you to add your own configuration settings within a custom module.

Drupal 8 Configuration Management will teach you everything you need to know about the Configuration Management system and get you started with using its features quickly, whether you are a Drupal site administrator with no programming knowledge or a seasoned developer. Starting at defining what Configuration Management actually means and why you should be using it, the book also covers how site administrators can make the most out of it without any programming knowledge. For more advanced users with programming skills, the book explains how to use the API to add custom configuration and how to upgrade custom modules to use the new Configuration Management. The book also covers some essential tools and best practices.

After reading the book, you will be able to write schema files for custom configurations, make use of the Configuration Management API, and upgrade modules to the new Configuration Management systems. Additionally, you will learn how to migrate configuration from Drupal 6 and 7 to Drupal 8 and how to manage configuration for multilingual websites.

You Will Learn to

• Update the database of a Drupal project to reflect changes in the codebase

• Optimize, execute, and monitor periodic and one-off tasks

• Browse through Drush and Drupal's hook implementations and functions

• Implement a roll-back mechanism on your commands to handle errors

• Define a group of site aliases to manage all the environments of your Drupal project

• Create shell aliases and adjust the default behavior of frequent commands

• Set up a development workflow for a team

In Detail

Drush for Developers, Second Edition, takes common challenges in Drupal projects and solves them using Drush. This book starts with the different installation approaches for Drush and its command structure. It then moves on to perhaps the trickiest challenge in Drupal projects: keeping code and configuration together during a project's lifetime. Next, we will deep dive into the tasks needed to keep a website under control and learn how to run, automate, and monitor them effectively.

Error validating and debugging our Drush commands is a must and this book has a whole chapter on that topic. The magic of managing remote Drupal projects through Drush site aliases is explained in the following chapters through a practical example. Finally, the book wraps up by putting in practice all the concepts covered in previous chapters in order to implement a development workflow for a team.

Who This Book Is For

This book is a best fit for backend developers with a basic knowledge of Drupal's APIs and some experience using the command line. Perhaps you already worked on one or two Drupal projects, but have never dived deep into Drush's toolset. In any case, this book will give you a lot of advice by covering real-world challenges in Drupal projects that can be solved using Drush.

Advanced level is intended for PHP and MySQL developers who have also had a prior contact with Drupal. This level is designed for Website developers who work for for third parties or for those entrepreneurs with an advanced technical level who wish to launch their own business ideas.

Contents:

• 41. Drupal development best practices
• 42. Tools for developers
• 43. Drupal Architecture
• 44. Creating modules
• 45. Database access and database schemas
• 46. Menu system
• 47. Creating forms
• 48. Programming blocks
• 49. Programming users and permissions
• 50. Programming content types
• 51. Programming entities and fields
• 52. Programming actions and triggers
• 53. Working with Files
• 54. Search system
• 55. Translating modules
• 56. Creating themes
• 57. Using jQuery and Ajax
• 58. Features
• 59. Installation Profiles
• 60. Contributing to the Drupal Community

If you want your Drupal website to work well on smartphones, tablets, and desktops, this practical guide shows you how to incorporate Responsive Web Design (RWD) with specific Drupal 7 themes. You’ll learn how to create attractive, easy-to-navigate layouts for everything from tiny phone screens to 30-inch desktop monitors—all with the same codebase.

Ideal for experienced Drupal developers, this book takes you through RWD basics and shows you how to build sites based on Aurora, Zen, and Omega—three popular base themes created by Drupal contributors. Whether you’re creating a new site with RWD or adapting an existing one, you’ll learn how to become a better, more efficient Drupal themer.

• Understand how Responsive Web Design and CSS media queries work
• Learn how the Sass stylesheet language and Compass framework support RWD
• Adopt a mobile-first approach to RWD—and learn why it’s important
• Get step-by-step instructions for creating custom subthemes on top of Aurora, Zen, and Omega
• Tackle common problems when building and theming responsive Drupal sites
• Explore alternative options for accommodating smartphone and tablet users

How can you help your Drupal website continue to perform at the highest level as it grows to meet demand? This comprehensive guide provides best practices, examples, and in-depth explanations for solving several performance and scalability issues. You’ll learn how to apply coding and infrastructure techniques to Drupal internals, application performance, databases, web servers, and performance analysis.

Covering Drupal versions 7 and 8, this book is the ideal reference for everything from site deployment to implementing specific technologies such as Varnish, memcache, or Solr. If you have a basic understanding of Drupal and the Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP (LAMP) stack, you’re ready to get started.

• Establish a performance baseline and define goals for improvement
• Optimize your website’s code and front-end performance
• Get best and worst practices for customizing Drupal core functionality
• Apply infrastructure design techniques to launch or expand a site
• Use tools to configure, monitor, and optimize MySQL performance
• Employ alternative storage and backend search options as your site grows
• Tune your web servers through httpd and PHP configuration
• Monitor services and perform load tests to catch problems before they become critical

What you will learn from this book

• Create and work with content nodes
• Organize your site with Blocks and Menu Blocks
• Work with Views and Custom Content Types (CCK)
• Building pages using Panels
• Personalize your site with a document library, an image slideshow, or a custom Drupal 7 theme
• Learn how to provide your site visitors with multilingual content
• Manage user accounts, roles, and permissions
• Maintain, optimize and back up your Drupal site

In Detail

Drupal 7 is a modern Content Management System famed for its flexibility and power. Using Drupal you can easily create custom functionality that would otherwise have to be purchased in many of the other leading CMSs.

"Drupal 7 Cookbook" is filled with recipes to help you to do more with Drupal and improve your skills. Chapters range from content creation, to theming, to managing your site. You will learn how to create your own content types and use them to create Views, Blocks, and Pages. This book will take you from novice to pro in just 12 chapters.

In a wide variety of practical recipes, you will learn how to work with views and panels, how to provide translations for your content to create a multilingual site, and to integrate your site with social media. You can develop the Zen starter theme or learn how to create custom cross-browser compatible Drupal themes, including themes for mobile devices. The Drupal 7 Cookbook contains all of the means necessary to take your skills from those of a novice Drupal user to a proficient site builder.

Approach

As part of Packt’s cookbook series, this book is packed with practical recipes that you can read as and when you need or want to.

Who this book is for

This book is for people who are familiar with the concepts of web development and CMS. If you have previous experience of working with Drupal, then this book will further your knowledge and give you ideas for fun new things to do with Drupal.