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)

Menus and Menu Links

Navigation is an important part of any web application. The ability to create menus and links easily in order to connect pages together is a core aspect of any content management system. Drupal 8 is fully equipped with both the site-building capabilities and developer API to easily build and manipulate menus and links.

In this chapter, we will discuss menus and menu links from a Drupal 8 module developer perspective. In doing so, we will touch upon a few key aspects:

  • The general architecture of the menu system in Drupal 8
  • Manipulating and rendering menus
  • Defining various types of menu links

By the end of this chapter, you should be able to understand what menus and menu links are, how to use them in your code and how to define menu links in your module. So let's get started.