Book Image

Drupal 7 First Look

Book Image

Drupal 7 First Look

Overview of this book

Drupal 7 contains features for which site administrators have been clamoring for years, including support for fields, an improved administration interface, better database support, improved theming, and more. You could of course make a laborious search on sites, blogs, and many online tutorials that would promise to update you about every new feature, but there's an even better way to know all about Drupal 7's new features: Drupal 7 First Look is the first and only book that covers all of the fantastic new features in Drupal 7 in depth and covers the process of upgrading your Drupal 6 site to Drupal 7. If you've used Drupal 6 and want to use Drupal 7, you need this book.Drupal 7 First Look takes an in-depth look into all of the major new features in Drupal 7 so you can quickly take full advantage of Drupal 7. It also assists you in upgrading your site to Drupal 7. Some of the new features in Drupal 7 include: Fields API, based on Drupal 6 CCK, which allows you to easily build your own content types Improved user interface for administering your website Built-in support for working with images and files Improved security for the site and users of the site Completely rewritten database layer DBTNG to make working with the database easier and more secure. Improved API for custom module development and user interface theming
Table of Contents (13 chapters)
Drupal 7 First Look
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
Preface
Index

Chapter 6. Drupal 7 Database Changes

In the last chapter, we looked at changes to the theming system that were introduced in Drupal 7. These changes have made the API more robust and easier to use. They also make it easier to implement high quality themes for your site.

In this chapter, we will look at changes to the database abstraction layer of the Drupal API. There are several significant changes to the Drupal API that have been made for version 7. The biggest of these is the new DBTNG layer, which provides an abstracted layer between Drupal and the database that stores your content. We will explore the DBTNG layer in detail during this chapter. In the next chapter, we will explore the other major changes and new features of the API including:

  • Using the Field API

  • Image handling API

  • Revised tokens and actions

  • RDF API

  • Permissions changes

  • Taxonomy changes and much more...

Without further ADO, let's start looking into the new DBTNG layer, which is critical for all Drupal 7 modules.