1. Intro to Features
english: fea· tures (NOUN)
A) THE STRUCTURE, FORM, OR APPEARANCE ESPECIALLY
OF A PERSON
drupalese: fea· tures (module)
a) A feature is a collection of Drupal entities which taken
together satisfy a certain use-case.
Presented by Aidan Foster
FOSTER INTERACTIVE afoster@fosterinteractive.com
Web Development + Design Linked In: ca.linkedin.com/in/aidanfoster

2. What is “Features”?
Slides & Links are posted:
http://fosterinteractive.com/features-intro

3. A Drupal Module
that saves your
Checky-Box-Stuff
to the file system
(as modules)

4. Checky Box Stuff ?
CCK Field + Content Types

5. Checky Box Stuff ?
VIEWS

6. Checky Box Stuff ?
Permissions

7. Checky Box Stuff ?
Add on Modules Extend this to include more
Drupal “Elements”
Features “Extras” module “Strongarm” module
•
Taxonomy Terms •
Config Settings used
•
Nodequeues by many modules & core
•
Blocks
Commerce Features
•
Product Types

8. Config Settings Module Files
(In Drupal Database) (can be version controlled)
CCK Field + Content Types
Exported as
Modules
Views
Permissions

9. Why is this useful?
Saves time for more important stuff

10. Basic Uses of Features
Learning Learning how other people do
Drupal things by installing their features
Kickstart Even made 2 “events” content types in
Projects by Drupal? Why do that work twice -
Recycling Export a feature and import to new
project.

11. Advanced Uses of Features
Improved Different team members work
Collaboration on database dependant parts at
Workflow the same time
Helps the This issue comes up where you’ve got
“content a live site with changing content.
Freeze”
Deployment Features can help apply changes to the
Problem Live server with little or no down-
time.

12. Features Setup
In “Modules” add a few extra folders to keep
things organized.
/sites/all/modules/contrib << Put all contributed modules including “features”
module in here
/sites/all/modules/custom << Put you custom project modules in here
/sites/all/modules/features << Put the modules generated in features here.

13. Features Setup
Install “Features” and “Strongarm” Modules...
sites/all/modules/contrib/features
sites/all/modules/contrib/strongarm
...then Enable them

14. LOL CatZ Review so Far
Modules Installed What’s Been Done
Views Created “Review”
CCK content Type
Image Cache (and dependant CCK modules)
Admin Menu Made Homepage View
Backup & Migrate
Features
Strongarm

15. Demo #1 - Installing Other
People’s Features
http://community.featureservers.org
(Click Actus)
Demo #2 - Making our own
feature

16. Features “Cheat Sheet”
http://nuvole.org/blog/2011/mar/25/code-driven-
development-cheatsheet
Features “Naming Conventions”
http://drupalcode.org/project/kit.git/blob_plain/refs/heads/
master:/kitf.txt