Software

The future of PHP ... at a distance

First a short disclaimer: It’s been quite a few years since I have last been subscribed to the internals mailing list. I still hang out in one of the popular core developer IRC channels, follow quite a few core developers on twitter, and chat with people at conferences--which allows me to still keep up with things to some degree. I do of course still work daily with PHP. So for better or for worse this lets me see PHP's future at a bit of distance from core development.

In part one of this post I showed you how to create a custom field to be added to Apache Solr index and altering the search based on this field. In this second part I will be showing you how you can define a custom field to be listed within the 'field bias' admin settings in the Apache Solr module.

Setting the field biases

Most of the time just setting a custom field to be added to your index is all you will need. But sometimes there is the need to be able to control the bias of your custom fields when Solr does the search.

Typically you would manage this in the Apache Solr admin pages by going to /admin/config/search/apachesolr/settings. This will show you a list of your Solr instances that you have configured for the site. To change the biases, click on the ‘bias’ link against the relevant instance.

Within this section if you choose the ‘Field Biases’ tab on the left hand site you can set the bias for fields within the site.  This will affect the what is more relevant when Apache Solr does a search.

This is fine if you just want to set the bias on the standard fields that are available, but what if you want to be able to control the bias of the new custom field that you have just created?

Allowing manual field biases control on your custom field

Looking at the Apachesolr module in more detail shows that this list of bias fields is made up of ‘default’ fields (e.g. content, h1, h2 etc.) and any fields that are ‘text’ fields.

If you have created a custom field and your field is a string (e.g. 'ss_my_field') then you would think that this would then show up as it is a string field which is text - right?

Well no ..... after looking at the field definitions in more details (as shown in part 1), string fields are different to text fields, which is why the custom string field wasn't showing in the list.

Therefore in order for your custom field to appear in the list of 'bias fields', you need to define your custom field as a 'text' field rather than a 'string' field (e.g. ‘ts_my_field’). Having done this, re-index the content and the custom field now shows in this list of field biases.

Hooray I hear you shout .... well almost.  The field shows in the list but the label of this custom field shows as the field name (e.g. ‘ts_my_field’) - not very readable or friendly.

Helpfully there is a hook provided by the ApacheSolr module to map fields to a label for display:

/** * Implements hook_apachesolr_field_name_map_alter(). */ function MY_MODULE_apachesolr_field_name_map_alter(&$map) { $map['ts_my_field'] = t('This is the label for my custom field'); }

Now your new custom field shows in the list of 'bias fields' and has a nice friendly label for it. So you can now set the relevant value you would like for it to alter your search - happy days!

Read morePart 2: Apache Solr - Manually Controlling a Custom Fields BiasBy Mike Davis | 9th September 2014

Working with the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate, we recently had the opportunity to automate how the Center's research papers are submitted to a popular repository of research about economics. This post discusses how we created a software module that others who use the open source Drupal web content management system can reuse and enhance.
 

September is a busy month over here at Zivtech as we embark on Drupaldelphia, a training on Panels and a handful of meetups. We will be out and about throughout the month, so be sure to catch up with us at some of our upcoming events:

Node.js Meetup at Zivtech HQ

Our Involvement: Hosting, Attending

What: This is an installment of the second-Tuesday Philly node.js meetup group. We start things out informally and anyone that has something to share shows off what they've been doing with node.js.

When: Tuesday, September 9, 2014 from 6:00 - 8:00 pm

Where: 1315 Walnut St, Suite 1500, Philadelphia, PA 19107

PHIT Circle Presents: Aging in Place

Our Involvement: Sponsors, attending

What: Please join us on Thursday, September 11th  to learn about "Aging in Place". John Whitman, a Wharton Health Care Management faculty member and leading national consultant on aging and long-term care is assembling a panel of experts to discuss how innovation is enabling our seniors to receive the medical monitoring and care they need to safely continue living in their own homes. We will both define what it means to age in place and how it's different depending upon socioeconomic status, and what innovations and technologies are available and needed for aging in place to happen. Special emphasis will be placed on not just what is currently available, but also what is needed for the future.

When: Thursday, September 11, 2014 from 5:30 - 8:30 pm

Where: 4801 S. Broad St., Suite 100, Building 100 Innovation Center, Philadelphia, PA 19112

Drupaldelphia 2014

Our Involvement: Sponsors, presentors, attending

What: Drupaldelphia is an annual camp held in Philadelphia for the open source content management platform, Drupal. The event attracts developers, site-builders, content administrators, designers, and anyone interested in using Drupal in their organization or upcoming project. This year will again be hosted in the Pennsylvania Convention Center at 1101 Arch St  Philadelphia, PA 19107.

When: Friday, September 12, 2014 from 8:00 am - 4:30 pm

Where: The Philadelphia Convention Center, 1101 Arch St, Philadelphia, PA 19107

Philadelphia Drupal Meetup at Zivtech HQ

Our Involvement: Hosting, attending

What: We'll be talking Drupal, eating pizza, and drinking various beverages (some alcoholic, others not) from 6:30-9pm at Zivtech Headquarters in Old City. The pizza and drinks will be provided by the hosts (that's us!).

When: Tuesday, September 16, 2014 from 6:30 - 9:30 pm

Where: 1315 Walnut St, Suite 1500, Philadelphia, PA 19107

Drupal Training: Layout and Site Building with Panels

Our Involvement: Hosting, facilitating

What: Panels is a tool for creating advanced layouts and data displays in Drupal. In our day-long intermediate level training, we look at the full range of the Panels toolset and cover the following topics: understanding the Panels interface, tricks to make editing Panels easier, creating custom Panels layouts, styling techniques, building advanced data displays, helpful Panels features that many site builders miss.

When: Wednesday, September 17, 2014 from 10:00 am - 5:00 pm

Where: 1315 Walnut St, Suite 1500, Philadelphia, PA 19107

Comics are Magic: How Words and Images Create Content That Can’t Be Ignored

Our Involvement: Hosting, attending

What: Comic and cartoons aren't new, but it took the Internet to unlock their full potential. Find out how technology no more complicated than a jpeg can grab viewer's attention and deliver a message before they even realize they're receiving it.

When: Wednesday, September 17, 2014 from 6:00 - 8:00 pm

Where: 1315 Walnut St, Suite 1500, Philadelphia, PA 19107

PACT Thursday Networking Series

Our Involvement: Attending

What: Get back to basics and make new connections as PACT welcomes in summer. PACT invites its fellow members and guests from Technology and Healthcare Corporations, Entrepreneurs, Investors and Professional Advisors for an evening of networking. Come learn more about each others businesses & exchange business cards while enjoying cocktails and hors ‘d’ oeuvres.

When: Thursday, September 18, 2014 from 5:30- 7:30 pm

Where: Prime Stache, 110 Chestnut St, Philadelphia, PA 19107

These are just a handful of the events we will be attending, hosting, and sponsoring this September, so be sure to keep your eyes and ears open for more as we continue to update this list.

We can't wait to see you around!

Will you be attending any of our upcoming events? Let us know in the comments.

 

Terms: Eventsupcoming eventsZivtechSponsorattendhostMeetupDrupal PlanetDrupalNode.jsPACTContent MarketingTrainingsdrupal trainingdrupaldelphiaDrupalCon

Are you a site builder, themer, or backend developer who is comfortable with Drupal 7 (or 6) and worried about gearing up for Drupal 8?

Want a headstart?

Drupal 8 for Drupalistas at DrupalCon Amsterdam will save you self-study time by walking you through D8 in a day. You'll build a site, getting a hands on experience of the anticipated Drupal 8 changes, and dive deeper into your own speciality.

At the end of the day, you will be ready to dive deeper into Drupal 8 and start building projects. Our goal is to make your transition as smooth as possible. While we won't dive too deeply into coding (Sorry, all ye who seek Symphony training!) we will break into small, specialty groups at the end of the day so you can focus on one area; site building, theming, or coding.

Meet the Trainers from Amazee Labs

Long-time DrupalCon trainer Diana Dupuis (dianadupis), Site Building track chair Michael Schmid (Schnitzel), and DevOps track chair Bastian Widmer (dasrecht) of Amazee Labs have presented this training three times, including once at DrupalCon Austin to a sold-out room.

Attend this Drupal Training

This training will be held on Monday, 29 September from 09:00-17:00 at the Amsterdam RAI during DrupalCon Amsterdam. The cost of attending this training is €400 and includes training materials, meals and coffee breaks. A DrupalCon ticket is not required to register to attend this event.

Register today

Announcing the Future of PHP guest blog series

John Albin Wilkins recently gave a session on The new Front-end work-flow from ticketing to building at DrupalGov Canberra. 

This session will outline our current mistakes and then introduce the basic techniques for CSS layering and using design components, the heart of any front-end CSS project. We will also discuss ticket structure, project organization, and tricks to implement components when you can't change Drupal's classes.

Find out what's install for Site Builders in Drupal 8 from my recent DrupalGov Canberra session.

Have you ever needed to remove in bulk a bunch of voting results for, let's say, a given content type? There is no option in the UI but you can find in the votingapi.module some handy functions that will allow you to write a customized update hook.

So let's say that we need to remove all the results for the article content type. If we look in the votingapi_vote table, we don't see any bundle or content type column, but we see an entity_id. So we need to get all the ids of our article nodes:

$query = db_query("SELECT nid FROM node WHERE type = 'article'"); foreach ($query as $res) { $nids[] = $res->nid; }

Now we have the $nids array containing all of our node IDs. Next, let's load all the votes for these IDs:

module_load_include('module', 'votingapi', 'votingapi.module'); $votes = votingapi_select_votes(array('entity_id' => $nids));

First we include the right module file and then we use one of its functions to select all the votes that match some criteria (in our case an array of IDs). Next, we need to worry also about the votingapi_cache table which contains the results of the voting per entity. We need to remove that as well. So we'll use another helper function from Voting API:

$results = votingapi_select_results(array('entity_id' => $nids));

Now we have also the result objects we need to delete so we can proceed with the actual removal. For this, we can use two more handy methods from the Voting API module:

votingapi_delete_votes($votes); votingapi_delete_results($results);

And that's it. This will remove all the votes and their aggregated results from both tables. It may take some time so make sure you have enough server resources to perform this task.

To use this code, I recommend creating an update hook in a custom module that you run once. But make sure you properly test it on your test environment before deploying and running the code on production servers. Always keep in mind the possibility of the server running out of resources depending on how many votes you have in the database.

Do you have any better way of batch deleting votes/results? This is what I found and I'm curious if you know of any better ways. Let me know.

var switchTo5x = true;stLight.options({"publisher":"dr-8de6c3c4-3462-9715-caaf-ce2c161a50c"});

The Views module automatically joins the node_access table only for node based views. In any other case we need to take care of the proper access handling ourselves.

Have you ever delivered a project that was met by the content team with a collective sigh? There's a simple way to avoid that - talk to them!

DrupalCon is the heart and soul of the Drupal Community. Thousands of us have attended over the past 9 years. Many of us, myself included, have had life-changing experiences at DrupalCon. How did DrupalCon change your life? Now is the time to share your story with thousands of your closest friends! ... or the Drupal community.

What is this for? It's for the "Prenote" session at DrupalCon Amsterdam. Every DrupalCon, Jam and I collaborate to show some aspect of the Drupal experience through humor, drama, song, cheesy costumes, and famous Drupal guest stars. We'd like to include some of these stories in Amsterdam!

Thanks for sharing!

Which DrupalCon? * Austin, 2014 Prague, 2013 Portland, 2013 Sydney, 2013 Munich, 2012 Denver, 2012 London, 2011 Chicago, 2011 Copenhagen, 2010 San Francisco, 2010 Paris, 2009 Washington, D.C., 2009 Szeged, 2008 Boston, 2008 Barcelona, 2007 Sunnyvale, 2007 Brussels, 2006 Vancouver, 2006 Amsterdam, 2005 Portland, 2005 Antwerp, 2005 Which DrupalCon changed your life? Tell your story * What happened that changed your life? Was it meeting a specific person? Attending a session? Being in the right place at the right time? What aspect of your life now would not have been the same if you hadn't attended DruaplCon. Will you be attending DrupalCon Amsterdam? * Yes No E-mail * Skype or phone How can we contact you? What's your Skype ID or phone number?

Feature

The latest rage in the Content Management world is the idea of a “decoupled CMS.” That is, rather than having a single monolithic system that handles everything from content entry to management to display and theming in one program spread, that responsibility is assigned to different systems: one that is really really good at content storage, one that's really really good at content management, one that's really really good at display and theming, etc.

At the same time, there has been a huge push for web services in almost every market. If you want content to be available anywhere besides an HTML page, then your answer is web services.

Drupal 8 will make huge strides in this area, but alas it's not out yet. Fortunately the answer to the second problem is the first; it is entirely possible to build a solid, scalable, performant RESTful web service with Drupal 7 by decoupling Drupal from the web service.

Recently, Palantir.net did exactly that for a major media client, video hosting service Ooyala, and it really drove home both the power of web services and the potential of a decoupled architecture.

The Problem

Ooyala wanted us to build a video curation service for one of their customers.

The first part of the problem was that the customer had data that was regularly updated, but this existing data source was incomplete, occasionally unreliable, and could be enriched with additional metadata, so human management was required before it could be used in the desired context (to describe video content in end-user-facing video-on-demand applications). The solution to this particular problem was the CMS.
The second part of the problem was getting the data in the desired context: highly interactive video-on-demand applications where users could purchase access to individual movies or episodes, collections of movies, seasons of a show, or other arbitrary groupings. The solution here was a REST API separated from the CMS.

Not complex enough? Add in a requirement to merge in data from a third-party video service to compensate for incomplete data.

I was given a problem: the (somewhat usual) error message showed up Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in element_children() (line 6396 of common.inc).. Trying to debug it with the usual print-and-see is entirely and totally hopeless. If you print just $elements from element_children? You get picture. If you try to print the backtrace? It's impossibly big. One hope is printing the backtrace with DEBUG_BACKTRACE_IGNORE_ARGS and then manually opening up every step in the rather big backtrace. Or you can set a conditional breakpoint on the problematic line with !is_array($elements) as a condition and immediately have access to the backtrace in a very nice structured/collapsed format where you can see the parent, grandparent etc render arrays, reach every caller with one click and eventually find this in a template:
<?php foreach ($content as $key => $item): ?>
  <?php print render($item); ?>
I have worked for years without a debugger -- finding this without is really frustrating and slow. Finding it with one is a matter of minutes. And PhpStorm debugger is literally zero config.

You know how every box of LEGO® comes with that pretty picture on the front of what it’s supposed to look like at the end...and how you might build it that way once, just once, to see how it looks, before tearing it down and making a spaceship out of the oxcart? It’s the same with websites. We all start off with this great picture in our mind of what a website will look like. And yes, the website might actually make it to that glorious utopia...until someone decides, no, they don’t actually like that thing there. No, this should be bigger. Or smaller. “I know I asked for an oxcart, but please tear it down and make a spaceship out of it.”

At 4Site, when we go about ‘designing’ a website, we think of the website as a sum of parts--planning ahead to how the site’s going to look at the end, how it’s going to feel. It’s not just a set of fields that then get some css (or scss!) and js/php applied. It’s something that’s eventually going to be touched by dozens, hundreds, thousands of people, both as users and as content managers behind the scenes. It’s something that needs to be flexible. Something that can move on the fly, something that can be used on a wide-variety of platforms, in a variety of uses, by a variety of users. Something easy. Something modular.

Like LEGO®.

That’s the beauty of Drupal and other modular CMS. You can take these pieces and make damn near anything out of them. So where is this metaphor leading? You need a great workflow to start, a great system to work within. You need your giant tub of pieces.

Once you have your basic “what do we need?” question answered, you can expand on what else you might want. The beauty of Drupal is that you have this extraordinarily flexible system--you can modify your content types on the fly. You can add taxonomies if you want to suggest related content to users. Your layouts are flexible, so you can use them to organize all types of content, albeit with a few minor tweaks. Add some fields to your content types and you can build a brand new view. Add some taxonomy terms and you can link your leaders together and allow them to connect with people that share the same interests.

The point of this is that you need the pieces first. To build a spaceship, you need to start with the 4x4 squares, the crystal cylinder things, and the LEGO® head with the 70s hair. It’s the same with websites. Karen McGrane says to use chunks, not blobs. So you break down your content into consistent and logical pieces. And that will give you the most flexibilty on the back end to organize and display that information, for different audiences, on different platforms, and over time as your needs evolve.

What don’t you want to do? You don’t cram every last bit of information you have into a WYSIWYG, because if you need it later, too bad, you’re writing it again. That would be akin to gluing your LEGO® together. If you ever want to use those pieces for anything else, too bad.

If you had a custom field or post type, you’ve got that piece already at your fingertips, ready for use wherever and whenever you want. You need that information later? No worries, it’s a custom post type. It’s a taxonomy reference. It’s right there in front of you. You decide you want your author on something else? It’s a term reference. An entity reference. A node reference.

So go build your castle or spaceship, your saloon or alien moon-base. Just make sure you have your big tub of pieces first, in case you decide later you want to add a mean laser cannon on the top. Or a Mars rover. I don’t know. You're the designer. 

We just provide the pieces.

This blog post is an extrapolation of a session I presented at FuseCon 2014. Please let us know if you'd like any help sorting out your content into manageable, reuseable pieces.

Column

The Drupal community's commitment to cooperation and sharing is one of its defining characteristics, and the Drupal Extension to Behat and Mink is a powerful example of that cooperation in action. It is not a Drupal module. Rather, it extends the functional testing framework of Behat and Mink in order to provide Drupal-specific functionality. You'll find its detailed documentation at Read the Docs.

The extension helps site builders automate tests for Drupal 6, 7, and 8 without having to write custom code for common Drupal features. It currently provides support in three major areas: setting up test data, mapping page regions, and auto-discovery of Behat tests provided by modules and themes.

Setting Up Test Data

To test any Drupal site, at some point you'll need to set up test data. You can do this in a blackbox fashion, using pre-built steps to create a user – and log in via the interface – then fill out the appropriate form. This approach takes time to write, time to run, and becomes tedious to read. Adding data in this detailed way is warranted at times, but you're typically better off inserting data as a single step in the Given section of your scenario. The Drupal extension provides a driver system to help you.

Blackbox

The default driver assumes you have no privileged access to the Drupal site. All your data setup has to take place through the normal user interface. The blackbox driver exists so you can benefit from other Drupal Extension features.

Drupal API

When your tests run on the same machine as your Drupal installation, you can use the Drupal API directly to create users, nodes, taxonomy vocabularies, and taxonomy terms, without writing any supporting PHP code and without the tedium of blackbox steps. To do so, you configure your testing instance to point at the local path to the Drupal site, tag the scenario with @api, and then use pre-built steps.

@api Scenario: Given I am viewing “article” node with the title “Drupal API”

This will:

Looking for a HTML range field in Drupal 8 core I did not found one. First I tried to alter Number Widget but that was wrong. Just extend a suitable widget. The code is very short. But the display is not as good as one needs. Where is the min and max value? And the current value? The specs @ w3c html5 forms input range has some user agent rendering which does not give min, max or current value hints.

number field.

With the 2014 European Drupal conference fast approaching, the Ixis team members attending this year have scoured the schedule for their must see see sessions this year, and why.

For the Developers

Content Staging in Drupal 8 (Wednesday 10:45) - moving content about from dev to production has always been a huge pain in Drupal, so hopefully we'll get a chance to see how this might work in Drupal 8 and finally put an end to the question of when and where the client should start adding their conent during the development phase.

read more

DrupalCon Amsterdam is less than one month away! I'm excited to meet up with all the Frontend developers who are coming to learn new things from each other.

Ruben and I have worked really hard as chairs of the Frontend track. We defined the track theme Futuristic Tools and Techniques. We aimed to select the right sessions with the best variety and balance that also flow together into one cohesive track.

The State of Frontend

We wanted to kick off the track with a big keynote-style history lesson and insight into the future of Frontend development. Have you ever felt overwhelmed by the ever-changing evolution of front-end development? Me to. After David and Brian's excellent session at DrupalCon Austin, My brain is Full, we really wanted them to continue that theme and aim for something bigger.

David and Brian are also working really hard to create an introduction to the entire track, pointing signposts towards other sessions in that track that can fill in more in-depth knowledge about particular subjects. I would encourage everyone with an interest in Frontend development to attend the session if only to better understand which sessions in the Frontend track are right for them.

We also have a few session that compliment and feed in to each other. Here are a few sessions we think work really well together.

Managing Complex Projects with Design Components & Layout Design Patterns & GSS - The CSS Layout System that's 2 Generations Ahead

John Albin led the initiative to bring OOCSS-style CSS standards into Drupal 8, so I'm inclined to say he knows a thing or two in this area. Managing Complex Projects With Design Components, is a great introduction to to whys, hows, and gotchas of writing better CSS.

After you know your component variants from your component modifiers (spoilers!), you can take a really deep dive into another color of the SMACSS rainbow with Layout Design Patterns. I really like the structure of this walk, that covers the foundations of CSS layouts, grid systems, and implementation in Drupal.

You think you know layouts? Maybe you think flexbox is cool? Prepare to get your *mind blown* by Alan Burke in GSS - The CSS Layout System that's 2 Generations Ahead. A grid system that is unlike any other.

*I've been informed that the Drupal Association™ does not encourage nor condone the projection or discharge of any grey matter. Goggles are not provided and any stain susceptible clothing is worn at the attendees own risk.

Getting a Clue at the Command Line & Automated Frontend Testing

As a designer/front-end dev, I've never had a formal education on the command line, it's always been something I've picked up as I've needed it. It used to scare me. I'm so happy Emma Jane is talking on the command line in Getting a CLUE at the Command Line in the same vein as her introduction to Git at DrupalCon Prague last year. The command line is an immensely powerful and productive tool and I'm looking forward to picking up a few tips.

Now that you no longer fear the command line, you'll definitely be better equipped to take in Chris's session Automated Frontend Testing. He's already told me that he won't hold back, and I know he has little fear for live demos. This session is going to be jam packed with useful information on how to keep your Frontend looking good and loading fast, using some automated scripts.

We also have some great sessions on some really focused areas. I can't imagine walking out of any of these sessions without my brain sparkling with new knowledge and ideas.

Getting Content to a Phone in less than 1000ms

1000ms. The holy grail of performance. Can it be done? Or is it just fantasy?

I'm really glad Ian submitted this talk. It's great to have a performance talk with a focused goal. Performance is still as important as ever.

The future of Drupal and CSS

HTML5 and CSS3 is so last decade. No one wants your border radius any more. If you hate the idea of trawling through W3C specifications then this is a good talk for you. Preston presents another forward facing talk that we can also make use of today, a nice roundup of where browser technology is heading.

If you love the idea of trawling through W3C specifications then I can't help you.

Building Modern Web Applications with Ember.js and Headless Drupal

Ember.js is an excellent framework with a vibrant community. There are many frameworks out there and Ember.js is only one of them, but we felt it's important for DrupalCon to be introducing new perspectives and ideas. I'm really glad Mikkel is covering both sides of an Ember.js project using Drupal 7 or 8.

--
Lewis Nyman (LewisNyman)
DrupalCon Amsterdam Frontend Track Chair

Plugins play an important role in Drupal 8, and understanding how the entire plugin system works will help us better understand how, when, where, and why we use plugins.