How to Build a Drupal Module

Building a Module - the Basics Jeff Geerling - Archdiocese of St. Louis, Midwestern Mac, LLC October 28, 2010

Jeff Geerling - Quick Bio ✤ http://drupal.org/user/389011 ✤ Web Developer for Archdiocese of St. Louis (archstl.org, stlouisreview.com, stlyouth.org, 10 other Drupal sites) ✤ Owner of Midwestern Mac, LLC (midwesternmac.com) (work on other Drupal projects in my spare time) ✤ Personal site: www.lifeisaprayer.com (Drupal since 2009)

Getting Set for Success ✤ Turn on Error reporting, check your logs admin/settings/error-reporting admin/reports/dblog ✤ Install Devel module, always clear caches (admin_menu is helpful) ✤ Have the Drupal API handy (api.drupal.org) ✤ Drupal handbook also good: http://drupal.org/node/206753 ✤ Learn how to use your editor - TextMate, Coda, BBEdit... vim, etc. ✤ 2+ cups of coffee, Red Bull... pick your poison

Core Components of a Module ✤ .info File ✤ Stores metadata about the module - description, name, dependencies, etc. ✤ Only requirements: name, description, core ✤ More: http://drupal.org/node/231036

Core Components of a Module ✤ .module File ✤ Contains the code for your module ✤ This file can sometimes be tiny, sometimes huge - it depends on your module’s purpose ✤ Often, you will reference external .inc files or templates (so you don’t have a huge, messy .module file)

Let’s Make a Module ✤ Simple: “custom” module ✤ I have one of these on almost every website I run. ✤ Make ‘custom’ folder inside: sites/all/modules ✤ Add two new ﬁles: custom.info custom.module

custom.info

custom.module

custom.module - demo

Gallery Archive - Contrib module ✤ http://drupal.org/project/gallery_archive ✤ Wasn’t planning on contributing the module at ﬁrst ✤ Community’s given so much to me, though, so I thought I’d contribute back ✤ Contributions, reviews, and helpers are what make Drupal awesome ✤ If *you* don’t contribute, who will?

Gallery Archive - demo

More Resources ✤ Drupal Coding Standards: http://drupal.org/coding-standards (It’s good to use standards regardless, as it makes your code easier to grok (understand) for other developers...). ✤ Module Developer’s Guide: http://drupal.org/developing/modules ✤ Examples for Developers: http://drupal.org/project/examples (A module that shows how to implement different APIs - great for training on how to manipulate core to do your bidding). ✤ Drupal API: http://api.drupal.org/ ✤ DrupalContrib: http://drupalcontrib.org/ ✤ Stack Overﬂow: http://stackoverﬂow.com/ ✤ Drupal hooks: http://api.drupal.org/api/group/hooks/6

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How to Build a Drupal Module

by geerlingguy on Oct 28, 2010

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How to Build a Drupal Module — Presentation Transcript