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)

Field type

The primary plugin type for creating a field is, as we discussed, the FieldType. It is responsible for defining the field structure, how it is stored in the database, and various other settings. Moreover, it also defines a default widget and formatter plugin that will be autoselected when we create the field in the UI. You see, a single field type can work with more than one widget and formatter. If more exist, the site builder can choose one when creating the field and adding it to an entity type bundle.

Otherwise, it will be the default; each field needs one because without a widget, users can't add data, and without a formatter, they can't see it. Also, as you'd expect, widgets and formatters can also work with more than one field type.

The field we will create in this section is for the license plate data, which as we saw, needs two individual pieces...