What you will learn from this book

• Manipulate and utilize comment, file, field collection, node, term, user, and vocabulary entities
• Attach, manipulate, and utilize date, file, image, link, number, text, and term reference fields
• Write type-agnostic code dealing with more types of Drupal data than ever before
• Upgrade a legacy Drupal node module to expose and utilize entities
• Expose your legacy database tables as fully-fledged Drupal entities
• Batch import remote data and expose them as entities
• Glean good coding practices for dealing with entities

In Detail

Writing code for manipulating Drupal data has never been easier! Learn to dice and serve your data as you slowly peel back the layers of the Drupal entity onion. Next, expose your legacy local and remote data to take full advantage of Drupal's vast solution space.

Programming Drupal 7 Entities is a practical, hands-on guide that provides you with a thorough knowledge of Drupal's entity paradigm and a number of clear step-by-step exercises, which will help you take advantage of the real power that is available when developing using entities.

This book looks at the Drupal 7 entity paradigm, and breaks down the mystery and confusion that developers face when building custom solutions using entities. It will take you through a number of clear, practical recipes that will help you to take full advantage of Drupal entities in your web solutions without much coding.

You will also learn how to expose local and remote data to give your legacy data new life as fully-fledged Drupal entities that can be used by other modules such as views, rules, and so on. In addition to this, you'll learn to create, retrieve, update, and delete (CRUD) entities, their properties and fields, along with some programmatic wizardry to manipulate complex entities such as field collections. If you want to develop quickly and easily using Drupal entities, then this is the book for you.

You will learn everything you need to know to develop code and expose data using entities in Programming Drupal 7 Entities.

Approach

The book follows a standard tutorial-based approach to create, retrieve, update, and delete Drupal 7 entities, their properties and fields.

Who this book is for

Programming Drupal 7 Entities is perfect for intermediate or advanced developers new to Drupal entity development who are looking to get a good grounding in how to code using the new paradigm. It’s assumed that you will have some experience in PHP development already, and being vaguely familiar with Drupal, GIT, and Drush will also help.

What you will learn from this book

Build an intuitive structure to allow students and teachers to find relevant content by creating blogs for both teachers and students
Create roles and permissions for controlling access to different parts of the site
Share and manage bookmarks, podcasts, images, and video to support teaching and learning
Foster discussion and communication among teachers, students, and also the larger school community to collaborate on projects
Support multiple classes within the same site
Publish assignments for students in your courses, and track student responses to those assignments
Learn to exchange help with the Drupal community
Discover how to backup and maintain your site once it is built

In Detail

As social networks become more popular, their role in the classroom has come under scrutiny. Drupal offers a wide variety of useful tools for educators. Within a single Drupal site, you can set up social bookmarking, podcasting, video hosting, formal and informal groups, rich user profiles, and other features commonly associated with social web communities.

"Drupal for Education and E-Learning - Second Edition" teaches you how to create your own social networking site to advance teaching and learning goals in the classroom, while giving you complete control over features and access. Communicate with students, share learning resources, and track assignments through simple tasks with this hands-on guide.

In this book you will learn to install and configure the default Drupal distribution and then extend it to include blogs, bookmarks, a media sharing platform, and discussion forums.

The book also covers how to organize your site to easily track student work on the site, and how to control who has access to that information. Additionally, it teaches you how to make the site easy to use, how to maintain the site, and how to ask for and receive help in the Drupal community.

Approach

With clear instructions and plenty of screenshots, this book provides all the support and guidance you will need as you begin to create your classroom website. Step-by-step tutorials show you how to use Drupal in the most efficient and effective ways possible. People new to Drupal will find a good introduction of the basics; while more experienced users will learn useful tips and tricks for using Drupal in a classroom context.

Who this book is for

If you are an teacher, tutor or an educator who wants to build a website for your classroom, be it elementary or any higher education, "Drupal for Education and E-Learning - Second Edition" will guide you in achieving your goal at every step. No experience with programming languages, HTML, or CSS is needed to understand the examples in this book.

What you will learn from this book

• Configure your Drupal site to run imports of migrated content using the Feeds module
• Run an import of migrated content using Feeds module and a Feed importer
• Package your configuration using the Features module
• Utilize the Migrate module and its benefits
• Migrate blog posts from WordPress to Drupal
• Upgrade your Drupal 6 site to Drupal 7
• Configure the Feeds Tamper module to preprocess your Feeds imports
• Run additional imports using the Feeds modules to update and add new data and content to your Drupal site

In Detail

This book will show you how to migrate your content into the Drupal content management system. You’ll start by building a content type in Drupal to hold your migrated content. You’ll then import your content into Drupal using the Feeds module. In order to be able to easily use them again and again, you will also learn the best methods of maintaining and packaging migration configurations.

In "Migrating to Drupal 7" you’ll learn how to quickly package your legacy site’s data into a format that’s easy to import into Drupal. You’ll then build a content type to hold migrated data in Drupal. To save time and hassle you will learn how to import content into Drupal using the Feeds module. You’ll then get a brief introduction to the Migrate module and its powerful features.

With this guide you’ll also learn how to upgrade your Drupal 6 website to Drupal 7 in short, simple steps. You’ll also learn how to package your configuration code in Drupal using the powerful Features module.

In "Migrating to Drupal 7" you’ll start by collecting your current site’s content and packaging it up into a CSV file so you can easily import it into Drupal. You’ll then build a content type to hold your migrated data and content.

Mastering migrations using the Feeds module will be the next invaluable tutorial before you get a closer look at the Migrate module’s powerful features. You’ll then upgrade your Drupal 6 site to Drupal 7 and use helper modules to help run the upgrade faster and with less hassle. This book will then take you through the process of migrating CCK-based Drupal 6 fields to Drupal 7 using the Content Migrate module.

Using the Features module you will then package up our Feeds importer and content types into code to help you to build an easily maintainable and flexible Drupal website with.

Approach

Written in a friendly and engaging style with practical tutorials and step-by-step examples which show you how to easily migrate your Drupal 6 or WordPress site to Drupal 7.

Who this book is for

"Migrating to Drupal 7" is for anyone interested in how to move content from an existing website into the Drupal content management system. Both novice and advanced Drupal users will gain practical hands-on knowledge in how to migrate content into Drupal using this book. You will become experts in using the Feeds module to migrate content, and in packaging your code using Features.

Note: This edition is out of print. The 2nd edition of this book is now available; contains all of the content of the first edition, plus Drupal 8 content.

If you’re a web programmer new to Drupal, this book shows you which programming techniques you can use—and which you should avoid—when building custom web applications with this content management framework. Drupal has its own set of programming principles that require a different approach, and many programmers make mistakes when relying on skills they’ve used for other projects. The guidelines in this book help you through the transition by demonstrating which programming practices conform to the “Drupal way,” and which don’t.

If you’re familiar with PHP, you’ll quickly learn how to take advantage of the powerful Drupal API.

• Get a complete overview of Drupal, including Drupal core and add-on modules and themes
• Learn Drupal’s basic programming principles, such as the ability to customize behavior and output with hooks
• Discover common Drupal programming mistakes—and why hacking is one of them
• Explore specific areas where you can put your programming skills to work
• Learn programming tips and tools to help you perfect and debug your applications

See the original announcement about Building Online Communities with Drupal, phpBB and WordPress’s release in the Drupal news section.

Publisher’s description:

Content management, blogs, and online forums are among the most significant online trends today, and Drupal, phpBB, and WordPress are three of the most popular open source applications facilitating these trends.

Drupal is a full content management system that allows you to create any type of website you desire, from an e-commerce to a community-based site. phpBB enables you to set up a bulletin board or forum. And WordPress is the software of choice for the exploding blog community. All three technologies are based on PHP and MySQL.

Building Online Communities with Drupal, phpBB, and Wordpress is authored by a team of experts. Robert T. Douglass created the Drupal-powered blog site NowPublic.com. Mike Little is a founder and contributing developer of the WordPress project. And Jared W. Smith has been a longtime support team member of phpBBHacks.com and has been building sites with phpBB since the first beta releases.

See the original announcement about Drupal: Creating Blogs, Forums, Portals, and Community Websites’s release in the Drupal news section.

Publisher’s description:

A complete guide to every aspect of creating a variety of different websites using Drupal.¿ A trove of well-considered and practical information is presented in a logical and intuitive manner so that you can either build up your site step by step by reading from cover to cover or, alternatively, focus on your specific needs by diving into each chapter as required. This book will suit anyone who has a need to create a content rich website. Whether you are: Adding a personal web page. Building a forum. Writing a collaborative book. Retailing goods. Creating a blog. Launching a community Website. This book will prove to be an indispensable companion. Both experts and beginners to computing alike will find the information contained herein to be accessible and easy to intuit.