Software

By Michael Ross

This article was published in the print magazine Drupal Watchdog, Volume 4 Issue 1, 2014-05, on page 21, by Tag1 Publishing. The magazine was distributed at Drupalcon Austin, 2014-06-02.

Prior to Drupal 8, the core directories (includes, misc, modules, profiles, scripts, and themes) were located in the installation's root directory. Drupal 8 consolidates them into a new "core" subdirectory, which tidies up the root directory and should make it easier to track changes to core versus contrib or custom files. There are still three root subdirectories for modules, profiles, and themes, which can be used for custom and contrib projects. Each directory initially contains only a README.txt file explaining the repurposing and how developers can still use the pre-D8 "sites/all" scheme.

Figure 1. Drupal 8 root directories and files

Copyright © 2014 Michael J. Ross. All rights reserved.

By Michael Ross

This article was published in the print magazine Drupal Watchdog, Volume 4 Issue 1, 2014-05, on page 21, by Tag1 Publishing. The magazine was distributed at Drupalcon Austin, 2014-06-02.

When custom and contributed themes are added to a fresh Drupal installation, the core themes often fade into the background, even though they are valuable, particularly for learning theming. In Drupal 7, those core themes are: Bartik (enabled by default), Garland (Drupal 6's default), Seven (optimized for site administration), and Stark (minimalist and thus useful for module output debugging). The sole template engine is the venerable PHPTemplate. Drupal 8 adds Twig as the canonical template engine. Garland is gone, while Bartik, Seven, and Stark have been HTML5-ified and Twig-ified.

Figure 1. Drupal 8 core themes

Copyright © 2014 Michael J. Ross. All rights reserved.

By Michael Ross

This article was published in the print magazine Drupal Watchdog, Volume 4 Issue 1, 2014-05, on page 20, by Tag1 Publishing. The magazine was distributed at Drupalcon Austin, 2014-06-02.

Compared to its predecessor, Drupal 8 offers website builders far more capabilities without the use of contributed modules, because it incorporates many of the most popular ones into core (e.g., Actions, CKEditor, Configuration Manager, Entity, and Views), as well as useful field types (e.g., Datetime, E-mail, Entity reference, Link, Options, and Telephone). Conversely, less popular core modules (e.g., Dashboard, OpenID, Overlay, PHP, and Poll) have been dropped. These improvements greatly increase the range of websites that can be built with vanilla Drupal, and reduce the time spent downloading commonly-used modules and scrolling past rarely-used ones.

Figure 1. Drupal 8 core modules sample

Copyright © 2014 Michael J. Ross. All rights reserved.

By Michael Ross

This article was published in the print magazine Drupal Watchdog, Volume 4 Issue 1, 2014-05, on page 20, by Tag1 Publishing. The magazine was distributed at Drupalcon Austin, 2014-06-02.

In Drupal 7, site administrators can utilize its core Toolbar module for speeding navigation. Drupal 8's equivalent improves upon it, sporting a more readable interface, with clear icons. Admin menu items are grouped into: "Manage" (encompassing the menu items of its predecessor, with "Modules" renamed to "Extend"), "Shortcuts", and a user menu for profile management and logging out. The toolbar is responsive to the device's screen width, switching to a vertical orientation for narrow displays — which can be forced by clicking the arrow button on the far right of the toolbar's (white) second level.

Figure 1. Drupal 8 admin toolbar vertical

Copyright © 2014 Michael J. Ross. All rights reserved.

Drupal users who want to build or customize displays or layouts, or simply build their own administrative areas will love Views from the Ground Up and now is your chance to attend this training at DrupalCon Amsterdam!

Views from the Ground Up consists of 8 real world (and useful) views that are created with an increasing level of complexity. By the end of this class, students will be able to take almost any views display currently being used in Drupal, and override it, to fit better to their particular admin style and needs.

Meet the Trainer from the NorthCross Group

Chris Porter (netw3rker) has spoken at DrupalCon Barcelona, Munich, and San Francisco and has provided this training for the past four years to a variety of global clients, including Fortune 500 companies.

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.

Our training courses are designed to be small enough to provide attendees plenty of one-on-one time with the instructor, but large enough that they are a good use of the instructor's time. Each training course must meet its minimum sign-up number by 5 September in order for the course to take place. You can help to ensure your training course takes place by registering before this date and reminding friends and colleagues to attend.

Register today

Published: Wed, 09/03/14Download this episodeProject

It’s easier than you think to publish your module on Drupal.org. This is my experience going through the entire process. Sharing this experience I hope to convince you and others to do the same. Contributing back to the community that gives all of us so much, to many of us our livelihood.

• When Doug first recommended that I talk to you about this, I wasn’t really thrilled. But, I took a look at your slides, and thought that it actually looked like really good information. So, what made you decide to put together a presentation on the project application process in the first place?
  My “Why”
  Finally published a module to help solve my own problem
  My project that took me through this process is Display Suite Extra Layouts
  https://www.drupal.org/project/ds_extra_layouts
  Projects don’t have to be the 100% perfect solve for everyone, everywhere
  It’s more about: Giving back, centralizing code, helping others make great projects too.

• So what are the steps to getting a project reviewed and accepted?
  Where to start and basically the entire guide to submitting a module
  “Apply for permissions to create full projects” https://www.drupal.org/node/1011698
  Some things to know
  One time process
  Reviews are primarily by your peers
  Learns/reiterates code standards and best practices
  Do your Research First
  Check if your idea exists already
  Combine efforts where you can
  Volunteer as a co-maintainer where needed

• Okay, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty. What are the technical steps you need to follow to get your project approved?
  Setup Git Access
  Learn some Git basics
  Google is your friend
  Github & Code School’s tutorial http://try.github.io
  Setup your Git Access in your D.o profile
  Basically just need to add an SSH key
  Instructions here: https://www.drupal.org/node/1047190
  Sandboxes
  With Git access setup you can now create sandboxes or “experimental” projects
  Instructions here: https://www.drupal.org/node/1011196
  Take advantage of these, having a commit history of changes is a good thing.
  Use sandboxes to get your code “production ready”
  The Checklist (Pre-Application)
  Before starting the application make sure you run through the checklist
  Setup Readme, Git Branches, well commented, etc...
  Link to checklist: https://www.drupal.org/node/1587704
  The process goes much much faster, many people skip it
  PA Review Bonus
  Part of the checklist asks you to run your sandbox through a bot.
  Catches the majority of problems.
  You can setup your own Review Bot
  https://www.drupal.org/project/pareviewsh
  http://pareview.sh/
  “Full Stop” - Took me a while to figure that out.
  You get a review bonus when everything is fixed.
  The Application
  https://www.drupal.org/project/issues/projectapplications
  READ THE DIRECTIONS!
  In the title include core version: [D7]
  Write a Clear Descriptions… can be the same as your project/sandbox page
  Clear descriptions help people understand better the purpose of your project
  Provide links to your Sandbox, the Git clone command, and PA Review
  When you are ready set the status to “Needs Review”

• I noticed when I looked through your slides that you mentioned reviewing other projects as a part of this. Why is that needed?
  Reviewing other projects
  You must review at least 3 other people’s projects
  Post a link to your reviews in your own project application
  It’s just like trying a new module.
  Download it, enable it, try it
  Report back your findings… good, bad, and suggestions
  I learned a lot from doing this
  Now you wait.
  Others will review your project and post feedback.
  be prompt to fix issues
  Once all is well someone should mark your project “Reviewed and Tested by the Community”
  Then you wait for someone with the “Power” to grant you full project status

• Once someone has approved your project, what’s involved with getting the official project page setup?
  Into the Wild!
  You can now create your project page
  be mindful of your project URL, you can’t change it
  Create a new release on your project page and in Git
  Creating a release: https://www.drupal.org/node/1068944
  Tag Nameing Convention: https://www.drupal.org/node/1015226
  FIN.

Questions from Twitter

• timani.co.zw
  Will this cover D.O vs github for projects? Pros & cons of staying with current design vs migrating to github?
• Joshua Turton

MUP117 When are we going to see movement on the project application issue queue?

• Joshua Turton

MUP117 process seems broken - have to apply... but once past "quality control" you can release any junk u want.

• Joshua Turton

MUP117 Also: encouraged to review others to boost your app's priority, but why would we trust reviews from users who haven't passed through process? (speaking of high priority list/review bonuses) Episode Links: Jeremy on drupal.orgJeremy on TwitterJeremy on Google PlusDrupalCamp Utah Session PageSession SlidesCreating a SandboxApplication ChecklistPareview.shProject ApplicationTags: drupal.orgProjectsplanet-drupal

What do you get when you combine a state-of-the-art open source content management system with a seemingly endless need for developers, an instructor passionate about developing Drupal talent with solid fundamentals and best practices (yours truly), six eager, geographically diverse students (pictured above - more on them in future blog posts), and a modern online classroom environment (the topic of this post)? If the content management system is Drupal, then the only answer is the online version of the Drupal Career Starter Program: Drupal Career Online.

This week marks the start of the first session of Drupal Career Online, an immersive 12-week online training program designed to take people passionate about technology and turn them into Drupal professionals. The curriculum is the result of continuous development and improvement over the past three years, and now features a dedicated web site, PDF handouts and reference documents for every lesson, weekly self-assessment quizzes, screencasts covering important concepts and a healthy dose of Drupal community involvement.

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How many hours for multithreading the server? Or: dealing with overly detailed project planning Many developers, me included, dread that moment. Someone sits down with you and wants to know how many “hours” each step of the project will take. And of course the thing is, if you are doing something that has been done many times before, you might be able to provide a detailed estimate. People that build houses work like this, but they still often get it wrong.

Feature

Drupal has long had a strong collaborative culture. We share modules, we share development tasks on core and modules, and we share infrastructure on Drupal.org. That's a critical part of the health of our community: Sharing is how Open Source works.

The broader PHP world, however, has long sucked at sharing. Every project is its own island; sharing code between projects has been difficult, and managing third party libraries a pain. Just about the only option was PEAR, but unless you had root access on every server you needed, and were running only a single application per server, it wasn't really useful.

That was then, this is now. Enter Composer, a PHP dependency management tool that works. Composer began life in late 2011 in the Symfony community but was deliberately built to be project-agnostic, and today is being used by thousands of projects large and small, including Drupal.

Composer Basics

Composer consists of two parts. One is Packagist.org, which is a central clearinghouse of Composer-compatible packages. As of July 2013, Packagist offers over 13,000 packages, ranging from simple libraries to complete frameworks. The other part is Composer itself, a command line PHP application that is dead simple to install. By default, Composer will download packages from Packagist.org but you can also set up your own package server, or even just one-off Git repositories, to host Composer-capable code. All you need to make it work is a simple JSON file.

Let's start off with a trivial example. We’ll write a super-simple script that uses the Guzzle HTTP client (now bundled with Drupal 8). To start off, create your project folder. Inside it, create a directory called src. That's where we'll put all of our code. Now create a file called composer.json with the following contents:

Over the last eight months, I have been a developer at Appnovation.  During my time here, I have learned plenty new things and worked on a lot of different projects.

var switchTo5x = false;stLight.options({"publisher":"dr-75626d0b-d9b4-2fdb-6d29-1a20f61d683"});

The monthly Drupal core bug fix release window is scheduled for this Wednesday. However, there have been three releases (security releases as well as bug fix releases) in the last month and a half, and not as many changes have been committed to the development version since then as would normally warrant yet another new release.

A Drupal 7 bug fix release during the October release window is likely instead.

Upcoming release windows include:

• Wednesday, September 17 (security release window)
• Wednesday, October 1 (bug fix release window)

For more information on Drupal core release windows, see the documentation on release timing and security releases, and the discussion that led to this policy being implemented.

About a year ago I wrote a post on my personal blog about theming with Zen versus theming with Omega, and someone pointed out that there was a new release of Omega. However, until now, I've not been able to look and see how it differs. Armed with a free week to do some personal learning and keen to finally try installing and playing with Sass for the first time, Omega 4 became my guinea pig.

This post serves two purposes: it's partly a comparison between Omega 3 and Omega 4, but it also documents how to create an Omega 4 subtheme and set up Sass for the first time.

Before we begin About Omega 4.x

Omega is one of the best-known themes for Drupal, with over 80,000 installations at time of writing. Version 4.x takes a huge step away from 3.x. It's not just different: it feels like a whole new piece of software. The project page says:

Omega 4.x is a base theme framework aimed at themers who want to gain full control over the theme through code, rather than a user interface. If you depend on the user interface you can continue using Omega 3.x.

Nearly everything has been rewritten - the CSS has been optimized and cleaned up, partly to conform to new Drupal 8 standards, making it more future-proof; there are premade layouts available; and some functionality has been split out into extensions, while other bits have been combined into the main theme.

There are also some new features, including a browser width indicator (useful if you're doing responsive development in the browser). My favourite thing is the Drush integration: for 3.x you had to install Omega Tools to get Drush commands, but it's now all built in.

Differences

While I didn’t like the UI for rearranging components, that's probably one of the features I miss the most. In fact, there are a lot of differences in the theme settings: namely, in Omega 3, you could overlay the grid columns, but all you get in Omega 4 is a region demonstration. Everything else is now handled in code.

I can get this sort of thing from the block page... why do I need it permanently?

That does (in theory) make it easier to create new layouts. One of my biggest criticisms of Omega 3 was that it was so difficult to change the grid, but now you can create multiple layouts . I can see that being useful for a multi-site installation, and, if you pair it with Context , it could be useful for page-by-page layouts. You can also use the ones provided with Omega or its default subtheme Ohm - I've become quite a fan of Hero (above).

There's no more configuration through Delta (although I'm assured that's still possible, despite the project page explicitly stating that "Omega 4.x should NOT be used with Omega Tools and Delta"), but pleasingly, there's no more enormous and unwieldy .info file with two dozen files attached. Everything has been shifted into the backend, and the CSS is all compiled with Sass/Compass now.

It is worth pointing out that the huge, unwieldy .info file will return if you choose to stop serving the theme settings from a variable. This will export the settings and put them into the .info file, improving the performance.

For those who have delved into Sass before, you should find it easy enough to start using Omega 4 straight away. I’ve never used Sass before, so this will be a learning curve for me.

If you're looking for a starting point, you can try looking at the official Omega theme documentation, but I warn you that it's not the best place to go for information about installing Ruby and other component features.

Installation

Before I begin I just want to link to this awesome tutorial on creating new Omega subthemes by Daniel Sipos, which cleared up lots of things for me. Without that I'd probably still be trying to install Sass several days later.

So if you're looking for a real tutorial, go there. I'll just skim through basics. I'm not going to hold hands, but I will provide links where possible.

Omega itself

First and foremost, you'll need to download and install Omega. Whether you do it through Drush or by visiting the project page and downloading a zip file is up to you.

Make sure you use the latest development version (20th August) rather than the stable release: it fixes a bug that meant the right extensions weren’t being found.

Why are we installing Omega first? Easy: when you make your subtheme in Drush, it'll tell you what version of Ruby you need to install for Sass to work.

Ruby

In order to use Sass , make sure you have Ruby installed. If you're on a Mac, it should already be there, although you might want to try installing RVM (Ruby Version Manager) .

It's worth pointing out that if you're on a production server it's best practice not to install Sass unless you absolutely have to. Use Sass in your dev environment, fine, but only upload your compiled CSS files to your server.

Alternatively, if you don't want to use Sass at all, don't bother installing Ruby and ignore the contents of the Sass directories.

Omega subtheme

Once RVM is set up, create a subtheme. If you're feeling brave you can do it manually , but if you've got Drush installed it's so much easier just to run through the wizard with this command:

$ drush omega-wizard

Run that inside the site directory, follow the instructions, and enable it if you want. See? Much easier than copying and renaming files. And all on a new Drupal installation, too: I really appreciated that I didn't have to install anything to create a subtheme.

Gems and finishing

Finally, navigate (in your command line) to the base folder for your theme. You should get a notice:

ruby-1.9.3-p547 is not installed. To install do: 'rvm install ruby-1.9.3-p547'

If you do, then go ahead and install it. The Ruby version is related to the exact version of Omega you've installed, so pay close attention to the version number and run the command as it’s written.

In the base directory for the theme, you'll see there's a file called "Gemfile". This dictates which gems should be installed for the theme to work. Just run this command:

$ bundle install

That should fetch and download everything you need, and that's pretty much it!

The blog post I mentioned has more information about installation and some troubleshooting, so refer to that if you're stuck.

Now you can start editing the files in the themename/sass folder. Run this in your command line:

$ compass watch

for live updates (it will "watch" the SCSS files and automatically compile them when you save a change).

Creating layouts

Creating a new subtheme is much easier in Omega 4 than in 3 (or even Zen), with a caveat of "if you have Ruby and Sass already installed". If you've got to here and are thinking "yikes, that's a whole lot of work" or "that's too much command line work", you might think about trying Zen or Sasson instead.

But if you've got this far, chances are you want to create a layout that's not a 1-2-1 grid layout. There are a couple of ways to go: you can copy one supplied by Omega/Ohm (such as Hero) and modify it, or you can create your own.

Layout options for Omega 4 - default plus "Hero" from Ohm

I quite like Hero, so I stuck to using that. You can see some of the basic layout options on the Appearance page. This is as close to Omega 3's user interface as you'll get.

Luckily, there are some articles on Drupal.org about creating a new layout for Omega. This first one explains the basics - what you'll need in order for the layout to work - while a second one goes into a little more detail about folder and file structure.

This is much more complicated than Omega 3, but at least you can change the layout and grid if you want to. You could take some inspiration from around the web to create something new - including Gridset - and it seems to be quite similar to creating a new subtheme. They come complete with a pseudo-info file and everything!

It can be easier to make those grids if you use Susy and Breakpoint , two Sass extensions that'll do the grunt work for you. Then it’s on to the styling!

Sass

It took me a while to get my head around "how Sass works". I understood the variables and mixins - that was what I was most keen to try - but I found it hard to understand partials and compiling the files.

Actually, it was all a lot easier than I expected. You write your SCSS files then add them all to one main file with several @includes in it. Lots of people have written about their chosen directory structures; Omega gives you some folders as a starting point. Check out Stu Robson's "Structuring my Sass 101" post too.

One thing to bear in mind is that many people offering advice about file structures are not using Drupal (or an Omega subtheme)! You might find their advice isn't always relevant.

Finally, it's important to consider how you can integrate your Sass files and your version control. Some suggest only committing the uncompiled files for several reasons, such as forcing other developers to use the “correct”, while others say it doesn't make much difference. Right now I'm primarily a back-end developer, so I'm not sure what the best workflow is, but I’ll be interested to find out what does and doesn’t work.

Wrapping it up So who is Omega 4.x for?

You should consider using Omega 4.x if ...

• ...you're comfortable with getting your hands dirty and don't mind coding a layout from scratch.
• ...you like using, have used, or want to start using Sass to write your CSS.
• ...you want to create a whole new layout from scratch, with a custom grid system.
• ...you don't need a user interface to modify the theme settings.
• ...you're making a push towards more modular, SMACSS -based CSS.

Otherwise, you might want to consider using Omega 3.x, or a different theme altogether.

Other useful links

• Musings on Preprocessing | CSS-Tricks
• Always Twisted - Sass blogging by Stu Robson
• Omega theming handbook
• Omega 3.x vs. Omega 4.x - Comparing Apples and Oranges

eCommerce is undergoing rapid change from the traditional search, view, add to cart, and checkout paradigm to one that is rich in content, creates a more engaging and unified user experience, and drives buying decisions within that context. This change will require a shift in thinking around the platforms selected and their ability to support both content and eCommerce needs seamlessly. No longer will silo'd solutions with a long list of features that make vast (and many times incorrect) assumptions about your business provide the tools necessary to respond and adapt quickly to these market changes.

If you already have Drupal to manage content and community interaction for your site, or are considering it for its powerful CMS capabilities, and plan to add or upgrade commerce capabilities, you have two choices:

A separate eCommerce solution that is integrated with or "bolted on" to Drupal. While this can work, it adds unnecessary complexity and results in a disconnected experience for your users that maintains valuable customer data in multiple places. An alternate choice that an increasing number of companies are considering...

 

Utilizing the power, scalability, and flexibility of Drupal + Drupal Commerce, where content, community, and commerce can all be served natively within a single environment.

 

Here is why it is important to go beyond features to make the right long-term decision for your business.

Looking Beyond Features when Selecting an eCommerce Solution

All too often, eCommerce selection is based on a long list of features. While features are important, focusing too much on features creates blind spots that prevent focus on other more strategic considerations that have far greater impact on long-term success. The reality is that eCommerce solutions today all do approximately the same thing. General feature parity exists because eCommerce has been around for a long time and there is little in terms of features that differentiates one from the other.

Let's face it, any feature list, and the assumptions they are based on, only reflects requirements that are important at a given point in time. Undoubtedly, those requirements will change over time; sometimes very quickly. As a result, it is increasingly important to consider how well the solution you select can adapt to rapid changes in technology, the market and your business needs. The important choice here is determining how much control and flexibility you want to retain in adapting to these changes versus being dependent on a particular solution vendor to meet those needs.

Having the flexibility to implement new features and rapidly innovate in the future to serve the changing needs of your customers and business is a critical consideration when selecting an eCommerce solution.

As businesses focus more on inspirational shopping driven by engaging content, the "feature" that will become increasingly important is a rich CMS that is natively integrated with eCommerce.

Drupal + Drupal Commerce provide seamless Content and Commerce

The importance of content and social engagement in influencing what people buy cannot be overstated. Drupal + Drupal Commerce is the only solution that provides powerful content, community, and commerce functionality all within a single environment. A rich content platform like Drupal is critical to creating an engaging user experience that results in attracting people to your site, keeping them there longer, and spending more money. 

Today, there is massive competition for eyeballs and high placement in search results. Google and other search engines now place higher priority on content that exists on your site and how that is shared and linked with other sites. A weak CMS or one that is separate from your eCommerce platform makes it significantly more difficult to get the results necessary for success. And if your online presence is split between two systems, it becomes even more challenging to target and personalize messages and offers since customer data resides in multiple databases.

While many sites bolt together independent CMS and eCommerce solutions, it's not nearly as powerful. A Drupal + Drupal Commerce solution means that you have 1 code base, 1 skill set, 1 backend, and 1 database, resulting in less complexity and a single platform to support your entire online business.

This is the 'almost' monthly update from the Documentation Working Group (DocWG) on what has been going on in Drupal Documentation. Because this is posted in the Core group, comments for this post are disabled, but if you have comments or suggestions, please see the DocWG home page for how to contact us. Enjoy!

Notable Documentation Updates

• Kåre Slettnes (kaare) contributed a great number of docs on using emacs for Drupal development: https://www.drupal.org/node/2327707
• owenpm3 updated the documentation for disabling modules: https://www.drupal.org/node/157632
• Jay.Chen wrote documentation for the mmenu module. https://www.drupal.org/node/2324017
• erok415 updated the Open Atrium 2 documentation: https://www.drupal.org/node/2321639
• The installation guide saw quite some updates and progress was also made on the theming documentation for Drupal 8
• Many people updated Drupal 8 documentation about, among others, configuration management, migrate, state & block API

Thanks for contributing!

Since our last post from August 1, 223 contributors have made 657 Drupal.org documentation page revisions, including 4 people that made 20 or more edits (thank you erok415, Jay.Chen, iantresman & drumm) and one person that did a whopping 66 revisions (keep rocking kaare!).

Report from the Working Group

• We are preparing a Documentation sprint at DrupalCon Amsterdam where we hope to finalize the work on the Drupal 8 help texts (to help out, see https://www.drupal.org/node/1908570). We will also make a start with creating or updating docs for the D8 core modules. We'll be using documentation issue tag "docsprint" to tag issues that we think will be good for sprints, over the next two months especially.
• After an initial period of setting up the DocWG, we have now opened up the monthly meeting of the Documentation Working Group to anyone who would like to attend. Let me know if you want to join the meeting.

Documentation Priorities

The Current documentation priorities page is always a good place to look to figure out what to work on, and has been updated recently.

If you're new to contributing to documentation, these projects may seem a bit overwhelming -- so why not try out a New contributor task to get started?

We wanted to have a quick clear button for any text field (similar to address bar of browsers in mobile and tablet devices). Snapshot below might explain it much better. In this you are seeing email search field in newsletter filter form.

While I was in search for creating this, I found HTML5 is as the way to go. One can simply create that by using "search" input type. The proper HTML tag for the same is below,

Have you ever had to sort an array in PHP? There are a bunch of functions available, the most common being sort(). This function does a default sorting of the values in your array. So if you have numbers or want to do alphabetical sorting, sort() will get the job done.

But what if you require a more complex sorting logic? Let's say you have an array of names that need to be sorted in a specific order. I don't know, because your client says so. Let me show you how.

Let's say your DB returns a list of names in an array:

$names = array("Christian", "Daniel", "Adrian");

And your client says they need to be arranged in the following order: Adrian, Christian, Daniel. You can use the usort() function together with a comparator function you write yourself. How does this system work?

As a second argument of the usort() function, we pass in the name of our custom comparator function. The way this gets processed is that all the values in the array that needs sorting are passed to this function 2 at the time (usually you'll see them as $a and $b). This is done to determine which one takes precedence over which. The comparator has to return 0 if the 2 values are considered equal, a negative integer if the first value is less than the second value or a positive integer if the second value is less than the first. What less means is up to you to determine. So let's put this in practice with our example:

function _name_comparer($a, $b) { $correct_order = array("Adrian", "Christian", "Daniel"); $a_key = array_search($a, $correct_order); $b_key = array_search($b, $correct_order); if ($a_key == $b_key) { return 0; } return ($a_key < $b_key) ? -1 : 1; } usort($names, "_name_comparer");

So what happens in my comparator function? First, I create an array that contains the proper order of the names. This means that each value has an integer key that can be easily compared (and that I store in the $a_key and $b_key variables). After comparing these, I return 0, a negative or positive integer. The result is that the $names array gets resorted in the order they appear in the $correct_order local variable I created. And that's it.

If the $names variable is associative and you need to maintain the keys as they were, you can use the uasort() function:

$names = array( "christian" => "Christian", "daniel" => "Daniel", "adrian" => "Adrian", ); usort($names, "_name_comparer");

The comparator function can stay the same, but the uasort() function will take into account and maintain the index association of your values.

And that's it. Hope this helps.

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

Another thing that was developed as a result of my big Commerce project (see my previous blog post for the run-down of the various modules this contributed back to Drupal) was a bit of code for generating a graph that represents the relationships between entity types.

For a site with a lot of entityreference fields it's a good idea to draw diagrams before you get started, to figure out how everything ties together. But it's also nice to have a diagram that's based on what you've built, so you can compare it, and refer back to it (not to mention that it's a lot easier to read than my handwriting).

The code for this never got released; I tried various graph engines that work with Graph API, but none of them produced quite what I was hoping for. It just sat in my local copy of Field Tools for the last couple of years (I didn't even make a git branch for it, that shows how rough it was!). Then yesterday I came across the Sigma.js graph library, and that inspired me to dig out the code and finish it off.

To give the complete picture, I've added support for the relationships that are formed between entity types by their schema fields: things like the uid property on a node. These are easily picked out of hook_schema()'s foreign keys array.

In the end, I found Sigma.js wasn't the right fit: it looks very pretty, but it expects you to dictate the position of the nodes in the canvass, which for a generated graph doesn't really work. There is a plugin for it that allows the graph to be force-directed, but that was starting to be too fiddly. Instead though, I found Springy, that while maybe not quite as versatile, automatically lays out the graph nodes out of the box. It didn't take too long to write a library module for using Springy with Graph API.

Here's the result:

Because this uses Graph API, it'll work with any graph engine, not just Springy. So I'll be interested to see what people who are more familiar with graphing can make it do. To get something that looks like the above for your site, it's simple: install the 7.x-1.x-dev release of Field Tools, install Graph API, install the Springy module, and follow the instructions in the README of that last module for installing the Springy Javascript library.

The next stage of development for this tool is figuring out a nice way of showing entity bundles. After all, entityreference fields are on specific bundles, and may point to only certain bundles. However, they sometimes point to all bundles of an entity type. And meanwhile, schema properties are always on all bundles and point to all bundles. How do we represent that without the graph turning into a total mess? I'm pondering adding a form that lets you pick which entity types should be shown as separate bundles, but it's starting to get complicated. If you have any thoughts on this, or other ways to improve this feature, please share them with me in the Field Tools issue queue!

Drupal 8, Plugins, Guzzle, CMI, Caching... If those buzzwords trigger your interest, you should keep reading this article. We will cover those topics as we are building one of our first Drupal 8 modules. Recently one of our clients requested a solution to integrate a custom feed called IBP Catalog. The IBP Catalog is a filterable XML feed, which enable to easily collect web component like banners, documents or even audio files. Those components are selected by the broker through a dedicated website.

Read More...

This is part one in a series of blog posts about the Drupal Community. There is NO SHORTAGE of posts on this topic, but I wanted to take the time to tell my story of how I got here and what the Drupal community means to me.

If you have ever attended one of my private or public trainings then chances are good that you have heard me utter the phrase that titles this blog post. You can also hear me saying this on a recent Podcast I did with the good folks at LightSky.com: http://www.lightsky.com/podcasts/drupal-community

Here is that quote again in longer form:

“Drupal is a community and there happens to be a piece of software by the exact same name, and that can be confusing for some.”

If you read that statement slow enough, or maybe a few times, I believe you will agree that this is a VERY loaded statement, a provocative one even. How does it make you feel when you read it? Do you instantly agree? Do you instantly disagree? Do you wonder if it is hyperbole or sensationalism at some level? I think all these reactions, and more, are well within the realm of expected, and acceptable, responses.

You see, my early exposure to “Drupal” started with a rather humongous dose of the Drupal Community. Therefore, it stands to reason that I know it well, love it dearly, and engage and describe it as often as I do. But it wasn’t just my early exposures that set me on a path of life long Drupal Community advocacy. It was the opportunities for continued exposures that were afforded to me by the very members of the community. It fed me, equipped me, and empowered me which, in turn, motivated me to energetically continue on in my role as an active Drupal Community member.

How it started:
For the LONGER version of this story, go listen to my 2009 DrupalEasy Podcast Interview.
Suffice to say that I discovered Drupal in December of 2007 and after becoming convinced that Drupal ROCKED I discovered that there was a training in Portland Oregon. This outfit with a real funny name was doing a 5 day training on module development for Drupal 5. What was that funny named company? Well, it was Lullabot, of course! :-) There I met MANY of the people who I count as good friends, partners, and colleagues to this day.
Let me keep this simple with a visual timeline of just how much Drupal Community interaction I had right out of the gate:

• 2007
  • December            | Discover Drupal
• 2008
  • Jan, Portland        | 5 days of Drupal5 Module Development Training with Lullabot & 2 dozen other [soon to be] friends.
  • Jan, Indianapolis   | I start the local Indy Drupal Users Group. Why? Because in Portland, Addi Berry told me to!
  • Feb, Los Angeles   | 5 days of Drupal5 Theme Development Training with Lullabot & some of my new friends from Portland PLUS some brand new friends.
  • Mar, Boston          | 4 days at DrupalCon with 850 Drupalers, so many of which I already knew from the 2 Lullabot classes
  • May, Minneapolis  | 5 days of Drupal6 Module/Theming training AGAIN with Lullabot & many familiar faces & new ones.
  • June, Toronto       | 5 days of Drupal6 Intensive Training AGAIN with Lullabot & many familiar faces & new ones.
  • July, Chicago        | 2 days helping to man the Drupal booth at HostingCon. Kieran Lal had put out a request for people to take shifts. I showed up and never left the booth. I was an animal doing everything I could to educate ppl on how awesome I thought Drupal was. I COULD NOT [would not?] shut up. I impressed the local Chicago Users Group members and they asked me if I would come speak at their first ever DrupalCamp Chicago. I AGREED! [Still didn’t understand what a DrupalCamp was!?!?!]
  • Oct, Chicago         | DrupalCamp Chicago is my 1st ever DrupalCamp! I wound up delivering over 8 sessions and leading a couple BoFs as I discovered my new title, King Of The N00bs!
  • Nov, Indianapolis  | I become aware of an event called IndyBANG [Indy Business & Arts Networking Get-together] I pay for booth space, print up a huge banner, and enjoyed some local entertainment, beverages, and got to tell my own city about this awesome thing called Drupal!
• 2009
  • May, Chicago        | My First PAID Gig! I am invited to deliver a workshop at the 1st annual CMS Expo in Evanston IL. Local community leader Matthew Lechleider and I wow a good sized crowd for a 1/2 day Drupal intro workshop. I end up meeting many ppl who will play important, longterm roles in my professional life. 

You get the idea! right? :-)
So if you do the math, My first 90 days in Drupal included 80hrs of lullabot workshops, and the first “solo” DrupalCon in North America. That’s pretty intense! It only stands to reason that my perspective on Drupal is one that is Community driven. When I think of Drupal, I think of the Drupal community.

Other upcoming topics include:

• Why it's important to distinguish the Drupal Communuity as its own entity and appreciate its value and power.
• How companies have leveraged the Drupal Community and how they've achieved measurable ROI from doing so. 
• How the Drupal Community is a "Value Added" consideration in the sales process and why the Drupal Community matters when businesses consider which CMS to use for their organization.
• The evolution of DrupalCamps across the years. Many things have changed!
• Other topics? Leave a comment on this post if you have an idea for a future blog post! :-)

Drupal Planet

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