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)

Automated Testing

Automated testing is a process by which we rely on special software to continuously run pre-defined tests that verify the integrity of our application. To this end, automated tests are a collection of steps that cover the functionality of an application and compare triggered outcomes to expected ones.

Manual testing is a great way to ensure that a piece of written functionality works as expected. The main problem encountered by most adopters of this strategy, especially those who use it exclusively, is regression. Once a piece of functionality is tested, the only way they can guarantee regressions (or bugs) were not introduced by another piece of functionality is by retesting it. And as the application grows, this becomes impossible to handle. This is where automated tests come in.

Automated testing uses special software that has an API that allows us to automate...