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)

Internationalization and Languages

Even though there have been great advancements across the board, Drupal 8 has a couple of almost revolutionary developments compared to its predecessor. Notable among these are the configuration API and the caching system, which are both lightyears ahead of what was capable in Drupal 7. Another one is the multilingual initiative that sought to make Drupal fully multilingual out of the box, rather than having to use 20 contributed modules to achieve results that don't even come close. This also includes the internationalization (i18n: https://www.w3.org/standards/webdesign/i18n) aspect that allows sites to be translated into any of the installed languages.

In this chapter, we are going to talk about internationalization and multilingual features in Drupal 8 from the point of view of a module developer. Many of the built-in capabilities of...