Overview of various tools to help Drupal developers build and develop modules.

1. May 16th, 2013 php|tek 2013 1
E-mail: chris@ctankersley.com
Twitter: @dragonmantank
App.net: @ctankersleyhttps://joind.in/8153

2.  ChrisTankersley
 Doing PHP for 9Years
 Lots of projects no one uses, and a few that
some do
 TL;DR https://github.com/dragonmantank
 Heavy Drupal Development for 2 years
May 16th, 2013 php|tek 2013 2

3.  Don’t use Drupal
May 16th, 2013 php|tek 2013 3

4.  Don’t abuse Drupal
May 16th, 2013 php|tek 2013 4

5. What powers your site
May 16th, 2013 php|tek 2013 5

6.  Pre-built *AMP Stack
 Available for Drupal 6 or 7
 Install and Ready to Go
May 16th, 2013 php|tek 2013 6
Advantages
Disadvantages
 Not built for multiple installs
 Can’t use for existing sites
 Only forWindows and Mac

7.  Best to use for module or theme
development
 I don’t like it for full site development
May 16th, 2013 php|tek 2013 7

8.  Make use of the “Sites” option to help
separate work
 On Mac, only the /sites/all/ folder is writable
 Even Sites you create are not writable
 Don’t put the entire stack inVC, just your
work
May 16th, 2013 php|tek 2013 8

9. May 16th, 2013 php|tek 2013 9
 Full server to run code
 Self contained and can be replicated
 Most modern machines can doVM
Advantages
Disadvantages
 Uses more resources
 Easier to break

10.  Best to use for full site development
 Or use it all the time, it’s nice to have an
environment you control
May 16th, 2013 php|tek 2013 10

11.  Try and pick a distro that is close to your production
setup. If you are running Redhat in production, set up
an CentOS box
 Set up the document root for your web server to be
the /vagrant folder (or sub folder, depending on your
site layout).This way your site will run automatically.
 If you are running CentOS and Apache, disable
SELinux so that Apache will use the /vagrant folder
 Don't use PHP 5.4 with Drupal 7 or lower
 Make sure APC, or some opcode cache, is installed
 Provide lots of RAM, at least 1GB
May 16th, 2013 php|tek 2013 11

12.  Run everything off of your local machine!
 Great if you can do it, I like vagrant better
May 16th, 2013 php|tek 2013 12

13. @grmpyprogrammer will track you down if you don’t
May 16th, 2013 php|tek 2013 13

14. Automatically making sure your code works
May 16th, 2013 php|tek 2013 14

15.  Write your tests before you code
 Watch it fail
 Write code to make your tests pass
 Feel better
May 16th, 2013 php|tek 2013 15

16.  Drupal ships with SimpleTest baked in
 Supports unit testing and functional testing
 Unit tests are done by extending
DrupalUnitTestCase
 Functional tests are done by extending
DrupalWebTestCase
May 16th, 2013 php|tek 2013 16

17. May 16th, 2013 php|tek 2013 17

18.  Unit tests do not bootstrap Drupal, so are
very quick
 FunctionalTests bootstrap Drupal, so are very
slow
May 16th, 2013 php|tek 2013 18

19.  The test runner is AJAX, so it can break very
easily
 Debugging can be hard since extra output
breaks the test runner, and since the DB is
destroyed watchdog() is useless
 You can use $this->verbose(‘message’) or
debug(‘message’) though
May 16th, 2013 php|tek 2013 19

20. Your command line friend
May 16th, 2013 php|tek 2013 20

21. Dump your database to an SQL file
$ drush sql-dump --result-file=/PATH/TO/dump.sql
Back up the entire site to a tarball
$ drush archive-dump default
View watchdog entries
$ drush watchdog-list
Update Drupal and modules
$ drush pm-update
Download module
$ drush pm-download [module_name]
May 16th, 2013 php|tek 2013 21

22. I couldn’t think of a good tagline that should go here
May 16th, 2013 php|tek 2013 22

23.  Allows you to quickly back up the DB and
move it
 No need to use a DB GUI
 Can do automatic local or remote backups
 Useful for moving databases from one server
to another
May 16th, 2013 php|tek 2013 23

24.  Exposes a lot of the structure of Drupal
 Things like nodes can be clicked through to see
their object structure
 Can auto-generate dummy content
 Better debugging output
 dpm() and dvm() for pretty output
 dpr(), kpr(), and dvr() will dump to the page
header
May 16th, 2013 php|tek 2013 24

25.  Package system for Drupal
 Takes a lot of stuff in the DB and makes it
exportable and portable via code
 Lot of stuff works out of the box, extra
modules like UUID, boxes, and features_extra
pick up the slack
 ftools makes updating features easy
May 16th, 2013 php|tek 2013 25

26. Understand it and harness its power
May 16th, 2013 php|tek 2013 26

27.  Page caching for full output caching
 Block caching so that dynamic content can
still update if it needs to
 You can configure how long to cache things
for
May 16th, 2013 php|tek 2013 27

28.  In Full Page Caching, most of the PHP isn’t
run
 Effectively turns your site into a static site (kind
of)
 With block caching, not all blocks will cache.
What and when to cache is up to the block
May 16th, 2013 php|tek 2013 28

29. It’s kind of like nuclear fusion, but without all the explosions
May 16th, 2013 php|tek 2013 29

30.  Will group needed JS and CSS files
together, reducing the number of HTTP
requests
 Will minify CSS, reducing some of the
transmission size
YOU have to make your modules take
advantage of it, though
May 16th, 2013 php|tek 2013 30

31.  Let Drupal know about your files
 drupal_add_js()
 drupal_add_css()
 Add the files to your .info file
 Don’t just add JS and CSS files via <script>
and <style> tags in your theme
May 16th, 2013 php|tek 2013 31

32. Really, ask.
May 16th, 2013 php|tek 2013 32

33.  Acquia Dev Desktop
 vagrant
 Drupal SimpleTest
 drush
 Backup and Migrate
 Devel
 Features
May 16th, 2013 php|tek 2013 33

34. May 16th, 2013 php|tek 2013 34
E-mail: chris@ctankersley.com
Twitter: @dragonmantank
App.net: @ctankersley
https://joind.in/8153