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)

Unit tests

As briefly mentioned at the beginning, unit tests are used for testing single units that make up the code architecture. In practice, this means testing individual classes, especially the methods they contain and what they should be doing. Since the testing happens at such a low level, they are by far the fastest tests that can be run.

The logic behind unit tests is quite simple: after providing input, the test asserts that the method output is correct. Typically, the more input -> output scenarios it covers, the more stable the tested code is. For example, tests should also cover unexpected scenarios, as well as exercise all the code contained in the tested methods (such as forks created by if/else statements).

The programming pattern of dependency injection—objects should receive as dependencies other objects they might need—becomes critical when it...