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)

Defining local actions

Nothing about our Hello World module calls for defining a local action link. So instead of doing that, let's check out one that actually makes sense. If you navigate to the admin/content screen, you'll see the + Add content button. It looks exactly the same as the example we saw earlier on the user management page. That is a local action link for this route. The + styling indicates that these links are primarily used to add or create new items relevant to the current route.

This particular local action link is defined in the node module inside the node.links.action.yml file, and it looks like this:

node.add_page:
route_name: node.add_page
title: 'Add content'
appears_on:
- system.admin_content

Again, we have the machine name (plugin ID) and the definition. I hope that route_name and title are, by now, clear to you. A new thing here...