In this course, you will learn to build your own custom modules for Drupal. Covering the Drupal 8 core API, you'll discover the most commonly-used Drupal hooks, services, and functions and find out how to use Drupal's documentation to learn about the rest. You'll develop several modules step-by-step, while following best practices to ensure maintainability and interoperability with other modules. This course is taught by a practicing Drupal developer and will take a pragmatic approach to development based on real-world experience.

Who is it for?

This course is for anyone who wants to create their own Drupal modules. It targeted a web developers, system integrators, and anyone who want to tweak Drupal's behavior to meet their needs.

Pre-requisites: This course was designed for those who have experience with Drupal site building and knowledge of PHP. Students without PHP experience should consider taking our PHP Bootcamp for Drupal 8 class. Those without Drupal experience should take Building Websites with Drupal 8

How is it taught?

The class will consist of four weekly video lessons, each around 3.5 - 4 hours long, and four weekly live Q&A sessions with the instructor. The lessons will cover the topics listed below and can be watched on-demand, anytime that is convenient for you. At the end of each lesson, you will be given an assignment to practice what you've learned. (We will provide web hosting for your practice work, so you don't need to worry about setting that up.)

The weekly live sessions will be conducted online, using the webinar software GotoMeeting. During the sessions, the instructor will answer all your questions from and will help troubleshoot any issues you have doing the assignment. (GotoMeeting allows us to view your computer, and take control of your keyboard and mouse if needed. So, we can see any error messages that you're seeing and figure out how to fix it right on the spot.) In addition to the live sessions, you will have access to an online forum to discuss assignments with other students and ask the instructor questions during the week.

After the course is over you can continue to access the lesson videos, free of charge, forever. There are no monthly subscription fees. Just come back and watch the lessons whenever you want. They are a great reference when you forget how to do something.

Topics Covered in This Course

Drupal Module Basics

• Module programming fundamentals
• Drupal code standards
• Creating custom-programmed Drupal blocks
• Implementing custom block access
• Creating configurable blocks

Routes, Menu Links, and Services

• Creating static and dynamic menu routes to map URLs to your custom page code
• Adding and enforcing permissions and custom access callbacks
• Defining menu links, local tasks (tabs), and action links
• Altering routes and menu links from Drupal core and contributed modules
• Using services with dependency injection
• Creating your own services
• Overriding and replacing services at runtime

The Database API

• The module lifecycle: install, uninstall, update
• Creating tables on module install: The Schema API
• The static query API
• The dynamic query API
• Accessing external databases from Drupal
• Using EntityQuery to query Drupal entities like nodes, users, comments, etc.

The Theme API

• Using render arrays
• Defining your own templates with Twig
• Defining libraries of CSS and Javascript

The Drupal Form API

• Creating forms in Drupal
• Form validation and processing
• Changing forms created by other modules

The Configuration and State APIs

• Storing and retrieving configuration values
• Providing default configuration with your module
• Configuration schema
• Storing runtime values with the State API

The Cache Metadata API

• Using cache metadata to specify invalidation rules for cached render arrays
• Understanding cache tags, max age, and cache contexts
• Creating custom cache tags, and how to invalidated tagged caches

Instructor

Wayne Eaker is the director and chief developer of Zengenuity. He's a Drupal expert with years of experience building highly-customized Drupal websites. He is also a seasoned trainer, having taught professionals, corporate clients and high school computer science students.

Cost

The cost for this course is $399. This includes:

• 16+ hours of video lessons and 4 weekly live sessions with your instruction.
• Permanent access to the recordings of the lessons and live session labs. Watch them again anytime you need them!
• A web hosting account for your practice Drupal site and custom modules.
• Access to an online forum to ask questions of the instructor and discuss with other students.