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Learning Drupal 6 Module Development

4.3 (16)

Learning Drupal 6 Module Development

4.3 (16)

Overview of this book

Learning Drupal 6 Module Development

Learning Drupal 6 Module Development

Credits

Credits

About the Author

About the Author

About the Reviewers

About the Reviewers

Preface

Preface

Free Chapter

Introduction to Drupal Modules

Introduction to Drupal Modules

Drupal's Architecture

Crucial Drupal Concepts

Developers' Tools

A Word on Our Demonstration Site

Summary

Creating Our First Module

Creating Our First Module

Starting Out

A Basic .module File

Installing a Module

Using Goodreads Data

Finishing Touches: hook_help()

Summary

The Theme System

The Theme System

The Theme System's Architecture

Creating a Custom Theme

Summary

Theming Modules

Theming Modules

Our Target Module: What We Want

Creating a Custom Content Type

The Foundations of the Module

A Simple Database Lookup

Theming Inside a Module

Overriding the Default Theme from a Theme

Summary

Using JavaScript and AJAX/JSON in Modules

Using JavaScript and AJAX/JSON in Modules

Picking up Where We Left Off

Introducing jQuery

Writing a Drupal AJAX/JSON Service

Summary

An Administration Module

An Administration Module

The emailusers Module

The Beginning of the Module

Registering an Administration Page

Handling Forms with the Forms API (FAPI)

Sending Mail with the Mail API

Incorporating the Module into Administration

Summary

Building a Content Type

Building a Content Type

The biography Module

The Content Creation Kit

The Starting Point

The Module Installation Script

Correlating the New Table with Nodes

The Content Creation Form

Access Controls

Database Hooks

Hooks for Getting Data

Theming Biography Content

Summary

Filters, Actions, and Hooks

Filters, Actions, and Hooks

The sitenews Module

Getting Started

A Simple Content Type, Defined in Code

Creating Filters and an Input Format

The Beginning of an Action

Defining a Hook

Completing the Action: Theming and Mailing

Adding a Trigger

Summary

An Installation Profile

An Installation Profile

Introducing Installation Profiles

Setting up a Distribution

Programming Profiles

The .profile Script

The Installation Task System

Packaging the Distribution

Summary

Installing a Module

We have a working module. Now we need to install it. This is typically done in three steps:

1. Copying the module to the correct location
2. Enabling the module
3. Configuring Drupal to display the module's content
Note
Some of the contributed modules for Drupal require additional setup steps. Such steps are documented by the module's authors. In Chapter 4, we will create a module that requires a few additional steps before the module is useful.

We will walk through each of these three steps.

Step 1: Copying the Module

Modules in Drupal are stored in one of the three places under Drupal's root directory:

modules/: This is the directory for core modules. Only modules supplied as part of the Drupal distribution should be stored here. None of our modules will ever be located here.
sites/all/modules/: This is the directory for modules that should be available to all of the sites hosted on this Drupal installation. Usually, this is where you want to put your module.
sites...

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Tech Concepts

36

Programming languages

73

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