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)

TempStore

The next system we will look at is the TempStore (temporary store).

The tempstore is a key/value, session-like storage system for keeping temporary data across multiple requests. Imagine a multistep form or a wizard with multiple pages as great examples of tempstore use cases. You can even consider "work in progress", that is, not yet permanently saved somewhere but kept in the tempstore so that a certain user can keep working on it until it's finished. Another key feature of the tempstore is that entries can have an expiration date, at which point they get automatically cleared. So that user had better hurry up.

There are two kinds of tempstore APIs: a private and a shared one. The difference between the two is that with the first one, entries strictly belong to a single user, whereas with the second one, they can be shared between users. For example...