Drupal Architecture and functionality

DrupalCamp Hong Kong-Dec. 13th-by Edison Wong

1. Hong Kong Drupal User Group
(HKDUG)
Workshop & Sharing
2014 December 13th

3. Wong Hoi Sing, Edison
●CEO, Founder, PantaRei Design
–2009, PantaRei Design founded
–2010, HKFYG YBHK applicant
–2011, ITF SERAP applicant
–2011, HKSTP Incu-Tech applicant
●FOSS and Drupal Developer, Contributor and HKDUG Co-founder
–2000, Debian GNU/Linux 2.2 ('potato')
–2005, Drupal Developer
–2008, BarCamp HK Speaker
–2008, HKDUG Co-founder
–2011, Drupal 7.x Core Contributor
●[email protected]
●https://www.drupal.org/u/hswong3i

4. PantaRei Design
●Hong Kong based FOSS service provider
–Content Management System (CMS) with Drupal
–Cloud Hosting Solution with Amazon Web Services
(AWS)
●Business Partner with industry leaders
–2012, AWS Consulting Partner
–2013, Acquia Partner
–2013, Atlassian Experts
–2014, Rackspace Hosting Partner

7. Outline
●What is Drupal?
●Evaluate Drupal Project Online
●Scalable & Modularized Architecture
●Export Settings with Features
●Revision Control with GIT

8. What is Drupal?
●Drupal is an open-source platform and content
management system (CMS) for building dynamic web
sites
●Distributed under the terms of the GNU General
Public License (or "GPL"), which means anyone is
free to download it and share it with others
●To easily organize, manage and publish your content,
with an endless variety of customization

12. Evaluate Drupal Project Online
●http://simplytest.me/
●On-demand sandbox environments
●No overhead for setup LAMP stack
●Simple, fast and for free!
●Let's try it now!
–http://simplytest.me/project/drupal/7.x
–http://simplytest.me/project/drupal/8.x
–http://simplytest.me/project/drustack/7.x-26.x

20. Evaluate Drupal Project Online
(cont.)
●Check “Status report” page
●Add new article
●Add new main menu link
●Add new block to region
●Add new user
●Change look & feel (theme)
●Change system settings

21. Scalable & Modularized
Architecture
●Why?
–Easy for implementation
–Reduce team development overhead
–Managable and redeployable
●How?
–Categorizing changes in different level
–Export data/settings with Features
–Manage revision with GIT

22. Scalable & Modularized
Architecture (cont.)
●Categorizing
–Global modules configuration (Module)
–Content types (CCK)
–Dummy data (UUID Features)
–Filtering logics (Views)
–Contextual conditions and reactions (Context)
–MISC
–Look & feel (Theme)

23. Module
●Review your project requirement
●Choose which modules/distribution would be suitable,
e.g.
–https://drupal.org/project/commerce_kickstart
–https://drupal.org/project/commons
–https://drupal.org/project/drustack
●Enable and configure
–admin/config
–admin/structure

24. Content Construction Kit (CCK)
●Content type is the main container for CMS
–admin/structure/types
●Group your content type by functionality
–i.e. share same fields structure
–Moreover, use Taxonomy to label different purpose
●Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS)
●Less is More
●CCK is in Drupal 7 core!

25. UUID Features
●Node/Term with UUID = Features exportable
●Taxonomy term related to filtering logic should
be export with UUID Features
–i.e. can remap with UUID in Views
●Usually, only basic pages should be export with
UUID Features
–Dynamic content migration should consider Migrate
●Patches required

26. Views
●Filter content with no custom code nor SQL
required
–admin/structure/views
●Manage with GUI
●Supported by most 3
rd
party modules
●Exportable with Features
–Good combo with Taxonomy + UUID Features!
●Views is in Drupal 8 Core!

27. Context
●Manage contextual conditions and reactions for
different portions
–admin/structure/context
●Very flexible and powerful (i.e. by rules)
–Drupal default with by blocks
●Reuse theme predefined regions
–Panels default custom layout and design
●Exportable with Features
–Good combo with Taxonomy + UUID Features!

28. MISC
●Custom blocks
–https://drupal.org/project/boxes
–https://drupal.org/project/bean
●Custom modules
●Additional functionality

29. Theme
●Site should work well even with Drupal default
theme
●Keep away from custom PHP logic
–Try to implement with previous level
–Reduce backend dependency
●Don't hack core
–Overriding with themable output

30. Export Settings with Features
●By default, modules settings store in database
–variable_get(), variable_set(), variable_del()
●Features can export these dynamic changes into a
new custom module (a.k.a. Features export)
–https://drupal.org/project/features
●After export, latest changes can compare with
archived version, and (partly) rollback or recreate

32. Export Settings with Features
(cont.)
●With Scalable & Modularized Architecture
–Export each layer, each group of configuration, individually
●Team development can be workout by sharing code,
and maintain own environment independently
–Shared testbed (i.e. single copy of code + database) no
longer required
●Redeployable
–i.e. Continous Integration (CI) possible

33. Export Settings with Features
(cont.)
●Knowledge management become possible
●Reduce development risk
●Reduce on going maintenance overhead

34. Revision Control with GIT (cont.)
●CSV
–Manage revision per file (rename not support)
–Remote repository server required (no local folder
offline management)
–Single commit management (other else contribute
by submit patches)
–TOOOOO OLD (well...)
●Used by Drupal during 7.x development cycle
●After Drupal 7 released, soon migrated to GIT

35. Revision Control with GIT (cont.)
●SVN
–Manage revision per folder
–Remote repository server required
–Single commit management
–A bit better than CSV, but branching model still
looks crazy
●At least, we now have GIT, why still using SVN?

36. Revision Control with GIT (cont.)
●GIT
–Manage revision per entire project
–Remote/local repository supported
●git init
●git add --all
●git commit -am 'Initial commit'
●git push
●git log
●git status
–Distributed workflows
–Used by https://drupal.org/ since Drupal 7
–You also know https://github.com/, isn't it?

39. Revision Control with GIT (cont.)
●Drupal configuration goes dynamic
●Features export make it as static files
●Static files revision control by GIT
●Team members can therefore share progress
by managed code with GIT
●Project manager (PM) can review individual pull
request submitted by team members, and fully
test before commit to main stream

41. Q&A

42. I Need More Help!
●Read documents from Drupal Community
–https://drupal.org/documentation
●Join Hong Kong Drupal User Group
–http://www.meetup.com/Hong-Kong-Drupal-User-Group/
–https://groups.drupal.org/hong-kong
●Contact us for one (1) month free-trial support
service
–[email protected]

43. Thank You
●Please feel free to contact us:
–PantaRei Design Limited
–Unit 326, 3/F, Building 16W
No.16 Science Park West Avenue
Hong Kong Science Park, Shatin, N.T.
–Phone: [phone]
–Fax: [phone]
–Email: [email protected]
–Web: http://pantarei-design.com