Book Image

Drupal 8 Module Development - Second Edition

By : Daniel Sipos
Book Image

Drupal 8 Module Development - Second Edition

By: Daniel Sipos

Overview of this book

Drupal 8 comes with a release cycle that allows for new functionality to be added at a much faster pace. However, this also means code deprecations and changing architecture that you need to stay on top of. This book updates the first edition and includes the new functionality introduced in versions up to, and including 8.7. The book will first introduce you to the Drupal 8 architecture and its subsystems before diving into creating your first module with basic functionality. You will work with the Drupal logging and mailing systems, learn how to output data using the theme layer and work with menus and links programmatically. Then, you will learn how to work with different kinds of data storages, create custom entities, field types and leverage the Database API for lower level database queries. You will further see how to introduce JavaScript into your module, work with the various file systems and ensure the code you write works on multilingual sites. Finally, you will learn how to programmatically work with Views, write automated tests for your functionality and also write secure code in general. By the end, you will have learned how to develop your own custom module that can provide complex business solutions. And who knows, maybe you’ll even contribute it back to the Drupal community. Foreword by Dries Buytaert, founder of Drupal.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)

The Database API

In the previous two chapters, we talked extensively about our options as Drupal 8 module developers for modeling and storing data in Drupal 8. We also saw some examples of how to use things such as the State, Configuration, and Entity APIs, going into greater detail about the latter by using it to build something useful. One of the key takeaways from those chapters is that the need for custom database tables and/or direct queries against them and the database has become minimal.

The Entity system is much more flexible and robust, the combination of configuration and content entities providing much of the needs for storing data. Moreover, the Entity query and loading mechanisms have also made finding them easy. Odds are, this is enough for most of your use cases.

Furthermore, storage subsystems such as the State API (key/value) and UserData have also removed much...