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)

TypedData

In order to really understand how entity data is modeled, we need to understand the TypedData API. Unfortunately, this API still remains quite a mystery for many. But you're in luck because, in this section, we're going to get to the bottom of it.

Why TypedData?

It helps to understand things better if we first talk about why there was the need for this API. It all has to do with the way PHP as a language is, compared to others, and that is, loosely typed. This means that in PHP it is very difficult to use native language constructs to rely on the type of certain data or understand more about that data.

The difference between the string "1" and integer 1 is a very common example. We are often afraid...