If you’re a web programmer, your experiences have taught you certain lessons—and only some of them apply well to Drupal. Drupal has its own set of programming principles that require a different approach, and many programmers make mistakes when relying on skills they’ve used for other projects. This book will show you which programming techniques you can use—and which you should avoid—when building web applications with this popular content management framework.
Updated to cover both Drupal 7 and Drupal 8, the guidelines in this book demonstrate which programming practices conform to the "Drupal way" and which don’t. The book also serves as an excellent guide for Drupal 7 programmers looking to make the transition to Drupal 8.
- Get an overview of Drupal, including Drupal core and add-on modules and themes
- Learn Drupal’s basic programming principles, such as the ability to customize behavior and output with hooks
- Compare Drupal 7 and Drupal 8 programming methods, APIs, and concepts
- Discover common Drupal programming mistakes—and why hacking is one of them
- Explore specific areas where you can put your programming skills to work
- Learn about the new object-oriented Drupal 8 API, including plugins and services
Jennifer Hodgdon wrote her first computer program in 1982, and has been a professional software developer since 1994, using a wide variety of programming languages (FORTRAN, C, Java, PHP, JavaScript, ...). She started doing PHP/MySQL web programming professionally around 2002, and set up her first Drupal web site in 2007. Soon after that, she started contributing volunteer time to the Drupal open-source project and the Seattle Drupal User Group: organizing meet-ups and conferences, serving as the co-leader and then the leader of the Drupal Documentation Team in 2011-2012, leading workshops, and making conference presentations. She is currently a freelance Drupal site builder and module programmer, the volunteer maintainer of several Drupal modules, the co-organizer of the Spokane (WA) Drupal User Group, and the Drupal Core maintainer/committer for API documentation and coding standards. She can be contacted through her business web site, poplarware.com, or through her Drupal.org user account (jhodgdon).
