The .info files is most important part of Drupal themes. The .info file in a Drupal theme configures the theme. Drupal 7 Support PHPTemplate engine which is needed to powered theming system. This file has a configuration function and syntax similar to a .ini file. 

The .info file is a collection of static text file, used to define and configuring a theme. Each line in the .info file has a key-value pair with the key on the left and value on the right hand side, with an "equals sign" between them (e.g. name = my_new_theme). Semicolons are used to comment out a line. As we do follow # symbol or /* */ symbols to comment out or to provide developer comment. Some keys uses a syntax with square brackets for building a list of associated values, represent to as an "array". If you are not aware with arrays, have a look at the default .info files that come with Drupal and read the explanations of the examples that follow. Even though the .info file is not natively opened by an Application, you can use TextEdit or Notepad on a Windows computer in order to view, edit, and save your changes.

Let’s look at an example of what you might have found in an .info file

name = My Theme
description = A description of my theme
core = 7.x

# Add a base theme, if you want to use one.
base = mybasetheme

# Define regions, otherwise the default regions will be used.

regions[header] = Header
regions[navigation] = Navigation
regions[content] = Content
regions[sidebar] = Sidebar
regions[footer] = Footer

 

# Define which features are available. If none are specified, all the default 
# features will be available.

features[] = logo
features[] = name
features[] = favicon

# Add stylesheets

stylesheets[all][] = css/reset.css
stylesheets[all][] = css/mytheme.css
stylesheets[print][] = css/print.css

 

# Add javascript files

styles[] = js/mytheme.js

 

There are some of the most needed information that need to be in every Drupal .info file

name – This should be human-friendly name that will be displayed on the theme select page.
and it can be set independently from the internal "machine" readable name. This imposes fewer restrictions on the allowed characters.

name =  A fancy theme

description (recommended) – This is a short description of the theme that helps identifying it on the theme select page. This description is displayed on the theme select page at "Administer > Site building > themes".

description = multi column row for fancy theme

core – earlier version of Drupal 6.x .info file should state which major core version of Drupal it is compatible with, just  to avoid compatibility issues. The value set here is compared with the DRUPAL_CORE_COMPATIBILITY constant. If it does not match, the theme will be disabled.

But in Drupal 7.x packaging script automatically sets this value based on the Drupal core compatibility setting on each release node. So people downloading packaged themes from drupal.org will always get the right thing. 

On top of that we also have other key value pair which is needed optionally.

core= 7.x

version (discouraged)
The version string is automatically be added by drupal.org when a release is created and a tarball packaged. So you may omit this value for contributed themes. However, if your theme is not being hosted on the drupal.org infrastructure, you can give your theme whatever version string makes sense.

version = 1.0 

base theme
When you are about to create a new theme in that scenario Sub-themes can declare a base theme. This allows theme to inherit, reusing the resources from the "base theme" will cascade and be reused inside the sub-theme. Sub-themes can declare other sub-themes as their base, allowing multiple levels of inheritance. Use the internal "machine" readable name of the base theme. 

base theme = bootstrap

region
If you overriding regions in D7, you are obliged to declare the line regions[content] = Content. If you want any of the default regions in your theme, you have to declare them as well.

In Drupal, we have block regions. Block regions are dynamic content areas that hold different content (block) that you can set through the Drupal administrator dashboard. The important thing is, these regions are set in the .info file of a Drupal theme.

regions[left] = Left sidebar
regions[right] = Right sidebar
regions[content] = Content
regions[header] = Header
regions[footer] = Footer

The above is a list of default regions in Drupal 7. To use those regions in the theme’s page.tpl.php file, all you need to do is something similar to this:

/* Display blocks in "Left sidebar" */

Features
In Drupal 7, features are not inherited from the base theme. If you are using features other than the default, you should copy the features declarations from the parent theme's .info file.
Various page elements output by the theme can be toggled on and off on the theme's config page. The "features" keys control which of these check boxes display on the theme's config page. 

The example below lists all the available elements controlled by the features key.

Drupal 7 features

features[] = logo 
features[] = name 
features[] = slogan 
features[] = node_user_picture 
features[] = comment_user_picture 
features[] = comment_user_verification 
features[] = favicon 
features[] = main_menu 
features[] = secondary_menu 

Stylesheets
To Override inherited style sheets: Specify a stylesheet with the same filename in the sub-theme. For instance, to override style.css inherited from a parent theme, add the following line to your sub-theme's .info file:

stylesheets[all][] = style.css

On drupal 6.x version themes default to using style.css automatically and could add additional stylesheets by calling drupal_add_css() in their template.php file. Whereas in Drupal 7, themes no longer default to using style.css if it is not specified in the .info file.

Scripts
All JavaScript files defined in the parent theme will be inherited.

Overriding inherited JavaScript: Specify a JavaScript file with the same filename in the sub-theme's .info file. For instance, to override script.js inherited from a parent theme, add the following line to your sub-theme's .info file:

On drupal 6.x version themes could add Javascripts by calling drupal_add_js() in their template.php file. if a file named script.js exists in the theme directory then it is automatically included. However, in Drupal 7.x version, this behavior has been changed again so that script.js is only included if it has been specified in the .info file:

scripts[] = myscript.js 

Conclusion: Drupal theme development could be a bit complicated at first time, but learning about Drupal themes in general and learning about what each file does and How functionality work and what type of function call does it make could help you a lot to set you on the right direction to becoming a Drupal Front End developer.
 

Drupal Custom Templates go a long way to help UI developers in Drupal, it gives an edge to easily create drupal custom pages with new templates and get the desired HTML output. You don't have to rely on any templates because it might not match up with the vision, requirement or content and expands the limits set by Drupal themes.

From the Beginning of time while doing Drupal theme development we prefer to use the own custom template to render page/block/ field/view. Overriding a template file is one of the common tasks for a front-end developer, but depending on the base theme used it’s not always clear how to go about doing it.

Most Drupal themes come with a minimum of 3 default template files: html.tpl.php, page.tpl.php and node.tpl.php. And many other template files used to control the display of more specific elements such as comments or individual fields. Each of these files can be overridden for a specific condition simply by creating a new drupal tpl file in the theme folder with the correct name. These file names are called “drupal template” and there is a standard set of these suggestions built into Drupal and listed in the documentation as Drupal Template Suggestions( drupal theme hook).

Page Template Per Content Type

The most common and overriding concept we used to follow is to not includ in the default list is the page.tpl.php override based on the content type being displayed. There is a node.tpl.php override based on the same condition which leads to confusion as to where the page override exists. On top of that, themes like Zen add this type of override to the Template Suggestions, which leads those using Zen to believe that this is part of the default list. Check the theme documentation to see if this override has been added to the Template Suggestions by the theme. If it hasn’t, you need to add it manually.

The process is straightforward. We can create additional Template Suggestions simply by adding them to the ‘theme_hook_suggestions array in our template.php file.

Open the template.php file in your theme for editing.
Look for a function called yourthemename_preprocess_page (replace the yourthemename with your theme’s name).
If this function already exists, you will need to add the if statement to the end of the function just before the closing bracket. Otherwise, you’ll need to create a new function to look like this:

function THEME_preprocess_page(&$variables) {
  if (isset($variables['node']->type)) {
   // If the content type's machine name is "my_machine_name" the file
   // name will be "page--my-machine-name.tpl.php".
   $variables['theme_hook_suggestions'][] = 'page__' . $variables['node']->type;
   }
} 

Now you can create a template file called page--content-type.tpl.php and all nodes with that type will use the new template file.

Filename Notes:

Use two dashes after the word ‘page’ in the filename.
If your content type is two or more words, replace the underscore ( _ ) with a short dash ( - ) in the content type machine name.

Using page--content-type.tpl.php we have the feasibility to create multiple layouts for each and every bundle. And on the same layout, you can add design/functionality of your choice.

As you can understand from name itself it’s basically used to Alter an email created with drupal mail in D7/ MailManagerInterface->mail()in D8.  hook_mail_alter() allows modification of email messages which includes adding and/or changing message text, message fields, and message headers.

Email sent rather than drupal_mail() will not call hook_mail_alter(). All core modules use drupal_mail() & always a recommendation to use drupal_mail but it’s not mandatory.

Syntax: hook_mail_alter(&$message)

Parameters

$message: Array containing the message data. Below are the Keys in this array include:

• 'id': The id of the message.
• 'to': The address or addresses the message will be sent to. 
• 'from': This address will be marked as being from, which is either a custom address or site-wide default mail address.
• 'subject': Subject of the email to be sent. Subject should not contain any newline characters.
• 'body': An array of strings containing the message text. message body created by concatenating individual array strings into a single text string.
• 'headers': Associative array containing mail headers, such as From, Sender, MIME-Version, Content-Type, etc.
• 'params': An array of optional parameters supplied by the caller of drupal_mail() that is used to build the message before hook_mail_alter() is invoked.
• 'language': The language object used to build the message before hook_mail_alter() is invoked.
• 'send': Set to FALSE to abort sending this email message.

Why i am discussing on hook_mail_alter() ?

Recently i was doing one of the Drupal 8 project where client was looking for formatted HTML mail that also works for contact form. So whenever an anonymous user fill up and submit the contact form, It triggers an automated mail to the admin user. If you ever get a chance then just look at that weird formatted Email. Mail related to contact form is being triggered from core contact module in D8.

Just to alter the email format in Drupal 8 we have decided to write a custom module using hook_mail_alter() which alters the outgoing email message using drupal_mail().

Let’s start with code:

To implement hook_mail_alter() whether you can write your own custom module or put it in any of the custom module.

Sample Source code:

/**
 * Implements hook_mail_alter().
 */
function mymodule_mail_alter(&$message) {
  if (isset($message['id']) && $message['id'] == 'contact_page_mail') {
    /** @var \Drupal\contact\Entity\Message $contact_message */
    $contact_message = $message['params']['contact_message'];
    // Get sender's name.
    $sender_name = $contact_message->getSenderName();
    // Get sender's mail.
    $sender_mail = $contact_message->getSenderMail();
    // Get subject.
    $subject = $contact_message->getSubject();
    // Get message.
    $message_body = $contact_message->getMessage();
    // Get the value of "field_request" field.
    $request_value = $contact_message->get('field_request')->getValue();
  }
}

In Above source code  as you can see that we have added conditional statement so the changes will be impact only on specific mail.  

$message['params']['contact_message']: The message entity stored in the variable and it contains all the values from the contact form. Where contact_message is the type of entity. We can also fetch all the custom field value using get() method.

Source code

hook_mail_alter is solution to customize your mail body send through drupal mail. In this blog i have shared my idea of how can we send custom HTML formatted mail which triggers from Core drupal 8 contact form.  
 

Media companies are facing new business challenges with increased pressure to execute new digital production and utilise big data strategies to monetise the opportunities at hand. The media companies need to adopt digital and data strategy, not only to move towards profitability but also to achieve operational efficiency.

Adopting a Multi-distribution Model

In order to deliver content for a variety of platforms/devices, it is critical that companies to establish platforms that can scale up and support this multi-distribution model. Most of the media companies rely on extensive networks of freelancers and subcontractors, thus media companies need resource scheduling toolsets to manage the same.

Insights

Utilising a variety of data sources and operational intelligence  can help media companies gain a better understanding of future customer demands. These data sources include social media, web browsing patterns, advertising response data, demographic data etc. to anticipate demand for more efficient content management, revenue generation and overall profitability. The rise in new tools and analytics, such as cohort are helping drive a better understanding of audience preferences.

Personalised Experiences

Through the captured data, customer needs and wants can be analysed and customised offerings are being offered to enhance customer experiences. Big data and operational analytics is also used to determine the business opportunity linked to the acquisition of new content and gain more advertising revenue growth through better targeting.

Data Management System

Big data management systems are needed to be deployed to analyse different forms of data and to ensure that the business can become more agile. There is always a need to deploy the right tools and capabilities to the right users, thus an optimal technology needs to be chosen depending on the data needs; bridging the gap between data collection and application.

For most publishers of online content, striking the right balance of advertising and operations revenue is an objective, and can be achieved with capturing and analysing accurate big data and analytics.

Combining analytics with operational intelligence will yield good results in the long run. Today’s business environment requires flexibility, speed and accuracy and media companies are making considerable investments in data capabilities to achieve agility. As data volume, velocity and variety grows, investment in data infrastructure and architecture becomes a necessity. By using operational analytics, and coupling it with big data along with available resources will drive the business to achieve efficiencies and deliver better customer experiences.

 

I was working on one of the projects where the client was not satisfied with the existing drupal search as it was not able to meet their requirements on the site. So they decided to go with Apache Solr.

Those who are not aware of what exactly it is, I would like to give them a very basic introduction or a description of what it does.
  

Apache Solr is an open-source search platform built upon java library. It’s one of the most popular search platform used by most websites so that it can search and index across the site and return related content based on the search query.  

For more detailed information, please visit http://lucene.apache.org/solr/

So let’s begin with solr installation. To install Solr on the windows system, the machine should have [JRE] Java Runtime Environment with the right version. 

Step 1: Go to cmd prompt and check for JRE with correct version.
If JRE is available in your system it will show you the version. If not then you have to install JRE 
 

Step 2: Download require solr version from below url 
https://archive.apache.org/dist/lucene/solr/
For this tutorial i have downloaded 4.6.1 from https://archive.apache.org/dist/lucene/solr/4.6.1/  Download solr-4.6.1.zip  File

Step 3:  Extract the Zip folder in your machine.now go to extarcted solr folder. Get inside the example folder and execute the command

java -jar start.jar

As soon as you run the above command solr will start with default port 8983. That can be accessible on localhost:8983/solr/#/

This will install Solr and run in the background. By default it uses the port number 8983.
You can change default port number to one of your choice. 

Step 4: To Configure solr with Drupal 7.x Download solr from https://www.drupal.org/project/apachesolr  download the recomended version and install as we do normal module installation.

Step 5:  Go to \apachesolr-7.x-1.8\apachesolr\solr-conf\solr-4.x copy all the files to solr server directory [solr-4.6.1\example\solr\collection1\conf\] and replace them with existing files. 

After replacing your file should look like.

Now your solr admin page look like 

Step 6: So we are almost done with solr server setup. Let’s configure on module level

To do this we need to go to solr setting page /admin/config/search/apachesolr/settings
Fill up mandatory detail like solr server url and  description and hit on Test Connection button.
 

Step 7: Almost done with solr server setup and configuration, let’s do indexing by visiting default index page admin/config/search/apachesolr. 

The above steps would cover up solr server installation in your windows machine with configured D7 Apache solr module. 

Conclusion: The main objective of this blog is to let the windows user to install and configured solr server and also allowing them to configure with Drupal 7. In present situation we already have variant of solr server on the web but i have recommended to use 4.6.x for Drupal 7. 
 

The business environment in publishing and media industry is being disrupted by the digital collision. The explosion of big data along with availability of technology, analytics and social media, are the new facets of customer engagement for the industry. This explosion is not only impacting operations of silos but also other components of the business, as they are involved in generating more data than ever before in structured as well as unstructured forms. Media companies are increasingly using the internet as a means to deliver content, resulting in increased data velocity and aggregated data volumes. This current digital turbulence presents massive opportunities – and big data has now become a foundation of future success.

While going digital, big data and analytics significantly impacts decision-making, as there will always be a need to switch to real time data resulting in increased scope and scale of work. For instance, the company Springer, a leading publisher of scientific journals and books; decided to go digital and provide online offerings, thus; making all content easily searchable and accessible on all devices. They used data tools to provide search results based on geographical locations and also real-time data along with trending topics. Not only they made their journals easily accessible but also gained 95% of their revenue from online business. This wouldn’t have been possible without using big data.

Media companies are now profiling customers using both enriched internal CRM data and public data from online content delivery platforms and social networks. Customer has now taken a center stage in real-time with data-driven reporting. Real-time data mining and analytics are revealing customer needs and this helps the companies to tailor content dynamically, resulting in better decision making and content provisioning.

When companies are handling so much of data, media asset management becomes important and meta-tagging of media assets becomes necessary. For, instance, British Broadcasting Company(BBC) generated more than two petabytes of data during the 2012 Olympics and the big challenge was to deal with the enormous data that was to be created; which included more than 10,000 individual pages covering over 10.000 athletes, 200 teams and 500 disciplines. It became necessary to incorporate big data in their strategy. As a solution, the BBC opted for generating these pages automatically and enriched it with metadata. This metadata was also used to automatically generate more new pages. This approach worked to handle huge amounts of data with an average of 25.000 transactions per second.

The challenge the media companies face is to access, analyze, and manage vast volumes of data and improve operational efficiency as well as performance. Using big data in an appropriate way can help transforming these challenges into opportunities.

Image Courtesy

 

 

We help to create solutions for “out of the box” web content management tool which is a  customizable platform -- this helps you find the right tool to serve your content management strategy.

When assessing who to hire for your CMS project especially for your Digital Publishing requirements, use this as you quick use checklist.

1. They build scalable sites

   Scalable sites are future proof and will be very handy once you decide to expand.

2. They build mobile first or responsive

   We know that Mobile first or a responsive site is THE basic requirement for Media and Publishing companies. With apps loosing grounds, it will mostly be Mobile first which is optimized and uses less resources and focuses on the user experience your audience needs

3. They build integrated Digital applications

   RELATED INSIGHT

   How to integrate Bynder DAM System with Drupal 8
   Connecting content to Social Media and integration of tools should one of the main things that gives more power to you.

4. They build easy Content Authoring

   An easy to use content authoring and workflow management means you get to do what you do the best to create great content. No managerial hassles and easy handling for editorial oe admin panels.

5. They build secure websites

   RELATED INSIGHT

   How secure is Cloud Computing for Media and Publishing websites?

   One of the key points in your project is obviously security, make sure your added team members are in the same page too.

6. They build multisite

   You may be having one site and expand to more tomorrow or may have multiple platforms which need to be integrated.

7. They build multilingual

   There are a large number of audience who are non-english and you cater to them which enhances your business opportunities, Multilingual sites go a long way to ensure this.

8. They build content first

   When you are primarily in the content business it is necessary that your services are more content oriented that target the right market, which is reusable and can be published anywhere, anytime into any channel

Find out, why we are exactly what you are looking for.

Drupal Global Training Days is an exciting initiative from the Drupal community to introduce new and beginning users to Drupal and we at Valuebound are excited to announce a session on 18th March to welcome newcomers to the Drupal community and empower them to start great work.

This is an initiative coordinated by the Drupal Association as a part of the  Global Training Days to introduce new people to the wonderful world of Drupal.

You will build a live website yourself , be a part of the Drupal community and explore career opportunities in Drupal

Difficulty Level: Introductory

Proposed Session:

Get started with development in Drupal 8. Learn about the main features and concepts of Drupal with live practice sessions. By the end of this training session you will know about the terminologies associated with Drupal and will be able to understand how Drupal sites are constructed. You will be equipped with the knowledge of how to differentiate and choose modules to get the functionality you want.

Duration: 1 day

Why is this workshop free?

Valuebound has been an active contributor to the Drupal Community and has achieved the second position worldwide through the same. This free event is part of our many more efforts to give back to the community.

Valuebound is solely dedicated in helping organizations and individuals to adopt Drupal in their operations in the most effective manner. We believe in giving result oriented training sessions which will equip you to build the perfect websites you visualize.

Who Should Attend?

• PHP/Web developers: Begin your career with a little more insight about how things work.

• Students: Give a boost start to your IT career path as Drupal developer. Drupal is widely used by Fortune 500 companies, governments and startups. Explore internship opportunities.

• Career switchers: Looking for the next opportunity to switch or learn what more  is there for you in Information Technologies? Come explore.

• Project managers: Do you manage or are you considering Drupal projects? Know what you should know!

• Decision makers: Evaluating Drupal to build your product on? Know why it’s the perfect fit.

• Everyone, who is interested in knowing what Drupal is, evaluating or implementing Drupal.

Things you should know:

A little knowledge of what is a Content Management System would be great. Experience in using and creating websites using systems such as Wordpress, Joomla!, or HTML and CSS is a plus but  NOT a mandate. We encourage the newbies and shape up the Ninjas!

This session would present an outline of concepts of Drupal and not an in-depth course. It is awesome for folks  who are looking to get a head start or the ones looking for an edge in their career or profile.

By the end of the training you will be able to:

• Build and make a basic Drupal site.

• Select, install and configure modules and themes from Drupal.org

• Create content and configure content types, create listings of content.

• Manage user roles and accounts.

• Manage aliases and URL paths.

• Create blocks and place them in the layout

Bring along your laptop to make best use of this workshop.

Its good to have a LAMP(Linux), WAMP(Windows), MAMP(Mac) setup done.

How to register : The event is free but registration is mandatory. RSVP to register.

 

In one of the earlier posts featured  What does a Drupal Developer do? We discussed about the role in general and how Drupal developers fit into different profiles.

We also spoke about the Skills a Drupal developer should have. In this post I will mention some of the things I have missed in the previous articles with the main focus being resources.

Learning to be a Drupal developer

This is not a very difficult task but you should know how. Know that Google is your best friend. I tell this to every newbie I see seeking help from seniors. You know what they do that you don’t? They know how to Google and yep that’s a thing. Of course they know a lot more than you do but there comes a moment even with the best developers when they look outside for answers.

What you should do?

You will need to learn to Google. Use keywords period. You want to know “How to build Drupal theme using Bootstrap” don’t type the whole thing on Google, instead type “build Drupal theme using Bootstrap” cut out those extras and use only the keywords.

Where to look?

Drupal.org is the best place to find a ton of material to begin with and of course there are various other websites, books and podcasts.

Technology

Modern PHP programming

What you should know

• Programming patterns

• Factory methods

• Dependency injection

• Namespaces & PSR-0

• Modern Object-Oriented PHP

• Classes, objects, inheritance

• Late static binding

Drupal 7 and its predecessors had basic procedural PHP programming mostly except for Drupal core, hook patterns and a few APIs would suffice but with the introduction of modern concepts of PHP in Drupal 8, you are required to work with advanced OOP patterns and syntax.  

Resources

• PHP The Right Way,

• Introduction to PHP classes

• How to Use PHP Namespaces

• Design Patterns of Drupal, Larry Garfield,

• The MVC Pattern and PHP, Callum Hopkins

• What is Dependency Injection, Fabien Potencier

• PHP Objects, Patterns and Practice (Third Edition), Matt Zandstra

Symfony

What you should know

• Symfony2 components form the basis for D8

• Drupal 8 doesn’t work like Symfony2

Drupal 8 and Symfony2 share PHP libraries, knowing Symfony2 will help you learn Drupal8 better, of course these two individually solve different issues but there are a few things knowing which will help you to be a better developer. The Symfony website is the best place to learn about it. You should know about EventDispatcher, HttpKernel and HttpFoundation, ClassLoader, YAML, Routing, DependencyInjection, Twig, Process, Serializer, Validator, Translator.

Resources

• Symfony

• Learn Symfony

• Events

New 3rd Party libraries

• Guzzle – for fetching content from URLs (replaced drupal_http_request)

• EasyRDF – for parsing RDF into PHP

• Zend_Feed – for processing Feeds

Composer

What you should know

• What is Composer and how does it work

• When do you need to use it

Composer is a dependency management tool for PHP used by Drupal 8 to handle its PHP dependencies, such as Symfony and Twig. composer.json is available at /composer.json, which follows a schema to define the version dependencies for each package.

It helps with handling dependencies and subsidiary dependencies with locating, downloading, validating, and loading said packages, while ensuring that exactly the right versions for each package is use.

Resources

• Composer change record

• http://getcomposer.org/

PHPUnit

What you should know

• Simpletest is replaced with PHPUnit, more or less

• Learn to use PHPUnit

The testing framework PHPUnit has been added to Drupal 8. Simpletest is still supported but should only be used for web tests and DrupalUnitTest's that require a complete or partial Drupal environment.

PHPUnit is the de-facto standard tool to write (unit) tests in PHP and offers a long list of advantages over Simpletest, such as overall better API's, Mocking, an improved test runner, code coverage report generation and more.

Resources

• Change record

• PHPUnit

• Tutorial: Introduction to unit testing in PHP with PHPUnit

Drupal

Plugins

What you should know

• How to find, create, load and work with Plugin’s

Plugins are small pieces of functionality that are swappable. Plugins that perform similar functionality are of the same plugin type. These are useful for extending or modifying both core and contrib behaviour. They offer more flexible architecture and make it easy to customise Drupal in a way that is also flexible.

Some terms you’ll need to be familiar with:

• Plugin types

• Plugin discovery

• Plugin factory

• Plugin derivatives

• Discovery decorators

• Plugin mappers

Resources

• Plugin Documentation

Entity API

What you should know

• Entities are Classed objects with a defined Interface

• Fields are bound to entities, and no longer shared across bundles

• How to access entity properties and fields

• How to define new Entities

Drupal 8 introduces a more feature rich entity API with full CRUD support in core. Entity forms have also been introduced to simplify the creation and management of entity forms.

• Entities are now classed objects that implement the Drupal\Core\Entity\EntityInterface.

• The default implementation is the Drupal\Core\Entity\Entity class.

• Entity create, update, and delete functionality is now provided via the interface.

• Users, nodes, comments, files, taxonomy terms and vocabularies have been converted to extend the new base class and interface.

• entity_uri() and entity_label() have been removed in favor of methods.

The Entity API in Drupal 7 was limited. Drupal 8 expands it heavily in order to provide better tools and flexibility for working with entities.

Resources

• Entity API Change Record

• Entity API documentation stub

• Documentation related to Entities

Configuration API & Configuration entities

What you should know

• How to load and save config data

• Creating and working with Config Entities

• How config data is managed

• variable_get() and variable_set() are gone

The configuration API provides a central place for modules to store configuration data. This can be simple static data like your site name, or configuration for more complex business objects like field definitions or image styles. Contrib module developers can commit YAML files in a module/config folder defining the structure of their configuration settings.

In addition, Drupal 8 gets config entities, which are like regular entities only they are used for configuration – not content – and are not fieldable, and use the Config API for storage, not the database.

Resources

• Managing Configuration in Drupal 8

• Configuration API in Drupal 8 API docs

• Understanding Drupal 8’s config entities, Lee Rowlands

• http://drupal8cmi.org/

Routes

What you should know

• How to write Symfony2 routes

In Drupal 8 we are using the Symfony2 Routing component, so we are able to split out the route handling aspect, and get a much improved and feature-rich solution. For example, this allows us to have multiple routes based on Accept headers, enabling RESTful web services.

Resources

• Using Drupal 8’s new route controllers, Kim Pepper

• Controlling Access to Drupal 8 Routes with Access Checks, Kim Pepper

• Drupal 8 change record

• Symfony2 Routing documentation

Services

What you should know

• Many Drupal functions are now “Services”

• What are Services and how do they work

• Accessing and injecting Services

A Service is any PHP object that performs some sort of "global" task. Each service is used throughout your application whenever you need the specific functionality it provides.

A Service Container (or dependency injection container) is just a PHP object that manages the instantiation of services (i.e. objects).

In Drupal 8, we use the Symfony Service Container component, and Services are defined in YAML files. One example is the Drupal::moduleHandler() service, which replaces a lot of functions dealing with module management.

Resources

• Symfony Service Container

• Introducing the Symfony Service Container, Fabien Potencier

Object-oriented forms

What you should know

• Forms are now objects, built from a common interface

• Extend \Drupal\Core\Form\FormBase for common form functionality

In Drupal 7, forms were built by a procedural function, and validation and submission were provided by magically named functions: the name of your form building function, followed by either _validate or _submit.

In Drupal 8, there is now an interface called FormInterface. It has four methods:

• getFormID()

• buildForm()

• validateForm()

• submitForm()

The form is called in mostly the same way as before, using drupal_get_form(), or via a route, however now we pass the class name instead.

Resources

• Change record

• FormBase change record

Drupal 7 and 8 are different in a lot of ways and while I was writing this article one of my colleagues pointed me to the list about changes in the versions.

I owe it to all these people for this article,

DC Denison

Jhmnieuwenhuis

A lot of people!

Stackoverflow

Inspirations

The shift in the publishing sector towards digital medium has in itself brought a revolution in a way how content is created and consumed by the audience. Digital is evolving in the publishing sector, thus, a flexible approach is the need of the hour to increase efficiencies and to remain relevant.

The move towards digital form opens the door to a vast range of opportunities for the publishing sector as it gives access to global market, multi-platform distribution and greater consumer engagement but the question still remains how to tap the potential.

Content creation: Traditionally, the content would be created for a single platform, with a specific target audience in mind. When adopting a digital approach, the publisher needs to ensure that the content needs to be created keeping in mind the different audience, across different channels as the content will be distributed across multiple platforms and in multiple formats in different web content management systems.

Thus, publishing content online is almost like creating a separate product altogether. This brings an additional investment, along with operational costs. To be successful and to be sustained in this business, there is a need to train, attract and retain talent with the appropriate skills. A need persists for both digital training and business training; a support much needed to encourage companies to experiment with innovative methods, products and services.

Content distribution: Multi-format/multi-platform distribution creates opportunities by offering consumers access to content everywhere, this also provides a new monetization model. However, to tap into this opportunity to maximize online revenues is not possible without investing in digital tools such as web content management system, CRM, DRM systems which are required to better manage the processes and accelerate content production.

Engaged community: Feedback plays an import role for publishers and digital medium gives access to this information. This information helps them to understand better and allows more tailored content to be created. Data analytics and insights should be used for a feedback loop and to incorporate those insights into the production of new content and to strategize accordingly. There has to be a  network-based strategy in place in addition to content strategy, to increase reach and network on the digital medium.

Collaboration: Since the new business models are driven by multi-platform distribution and consumer engagement.  Thus, there needs to be an increased collaboration to transfer knowledge and create new innovation communities through the proper implementation of web content management systems.

Online publishing is being disrupted like never before. Companies in these industries need to invest in new digital business opportunities to stay relevant in the changing landscape.