One of the key advantages of Docker is that it makes it much easier to share your containers with your team members. For most of this series, we've been relying on containers hosted on Docker Hub. When we need to create a custom container for our team, we want to leverage that same sharing infrastructure.
In this tutorial, we'll:
- Describe the various methods of sharing containers.
- Outline the advantages of using Docker Hub.
- Briefly describe why and when you should use a private container image registry.
For many container images on Docker Hub, the preferred approach is to create an automatic build. An automatic build integrates Hub with a public Git repository, providing you an effective, open, and best-practice approach to sharing your containers with your team, and with the world.
In this tutorial, we'll:
- List the advantages of creating an automatic build compared to other approaches on Docker Hub.
- Describe the process of creating an automatic build.
- Outline how to organize your git repository for your images.
- Learn how to configure and trigger the build on Hub.
Often it's useful for a container image to provide several variants of itself under the same name on Docker Hub. Docker uses tags to identify these variants. You can configure your own tags as part of your automatic build on Docker Hub.
In this tutorial, we'll:
- Outline the uses for tags
- Discuss the best practices for tag names
- Learn how to add tags to your automatic build on Docker Hub
Docker Hub provides a free, easy to use way of distributing your container images. However, there are situations where sharing your container images is either not ideal, bad practice, or against legal requirements. In those cases, you will want to use a private registry instead.
In this tutorial, we'll:
- Describe what a private registry is.
- Learn how to run Docker's own
registryimage. - Learn how to push and pull images from the self-hosted registry.
- Outline the production concerns for the
registryimage. - List other options for self-hosting your own images.
Docker provides numerous advantages for us as Drupal developers. It simplifies the management of infrastructure for our projects while allowing customization to suit each project's needs. Running Docker in production also brings a number of advantages, but it also creates new concerns.
In this tutorial, we'll:
- Outline the advantages Docker brings to the production environment.
- Highlight the concerns when planning a production deployment of Docker.
- Describe container orchestration and list several container orchestration platforms to choose from.
Planning for a migration is essential. In our collective experience we've never once seen someone sit down and execute a migration flawlessly on their first attempt. Migrations involve preparing and analyzing your source data, building a new website that data can be migrated into, and lots of testing, rolling back, and testing again, in order to get everything right. By the end of this tutorial you should be ready to start planning for your own Drupal migration project, and have a better understanding of the challenges of migrating from one system to another.
Preprocess functions are specially-named functions that can be used to add new variables to a Twig template file. They are commonly used by themes to add new variables based on custom PHP logic and simplify accessing the data contained in complex entity structures. For example: adding a variable to all node.html.twig template files that contains the combined content a couple of specific fields under a meaningful name like {{ call_to_action }}. Modules use preprocess functions to expose the dynamic data they manage to Twig template files, or to alter data provided by another module based on custom logic.
In this tutorial we'll learn how to:
- Use PHP to perform some complex logic in our theme.
- Store the resulting calculation in a variable.
- Make that variable available to a Twig template file.
Example use cases for adding variables with preprocess functions include:
- Anytime calculating the value to output in a template requires logic more complex than an if/else statement.
- Anytime the desired value requires additional string manipulation beyond what can be easily accomplished using an existing Twig filter or function.
By the end of this tutorial you should be able to expose new variables to a Twig template file by defining a preprocess function in either a module or a theme.
Twig has a special syntax for accessing array keys and objects, also known in Twig as variable attributes. In this tutorial, we'll cover the period or dot (.) operator to access a variable attribute, as well as subscript or square-bracket syntax, useful for when the key of the array contains special characters, like a dash (-) or pound sign (#). We'll also look at the logic Twig uses to find the matching attribute in an array or object.
Once you've defined an asset library you'll need to tell Drupal when you want to add the CSS and JavaScript that it includes to the page. Ideally you'll do so in a way that allows Drupal to only add the corresponding assets on pages where they are needed.
You can attach a library to all pages, a subset of pages, or to elements in a render array. This allows you to have some assets that are global, and others that get loaded on an as-needed basis. To attach a library you'll need to know both its name and prefix, and then use one of the techniques outlined below to let Drupal know when to include it.
In this tutorial, we'll look at attaching asset libraries:
- Globally, via your THEMENAME.info.yml file
- Conditionally, via a preprocess function using the
#attachedrender array property - Inside of a Twig template file
By the end of this tutorial you should be able to attach asset libraries in various different ways depending on your use case.
It's probably not too surprising that a library called Backbone aims to provide structure to your front-end JavaScript code and applications. In this tutorial we'll take a look at how Backbone.js goes about achieving that goal, and how you can make use of it on your Drupal site. We'll first take a high-level look at the main components that make up the Backbone.js library. With that basic understanding in place we'll look at an example of how you might integrate Backbone.js into a Drupal site.
Drupal's Breakpoint module defines a "breakpoint" plugin type that modules or themes can implement via a breakpoints configuration file. So, in order to make their breakpoints discoverable, themes and modules define their breakpoints in a THEME-OR-MODULE.breakpoints.yml file located in the root of their directory.
In this tutorial, you'll learn about the structure of a breakpoints configuration file and why you would want to use one. We’ll cover the kinds of metadata you can include in a breakpoint file, including key, label, mediaQuery, weight, multipliers, and breakpoint group. Throughout, we'll look at some examples of breakpoint configuration files available in Drupal themes and modules.
You've got a slick responsive theme for your Drupal site that's been implemented in CSS using media queries. But the content and images on your site will regularly be updated and you want to use the Responsive Images module to create responsive image style field formatters that you can apply to image field display settings.
In this lesson, we'll review the concepts of breakpoints and media queries so that you can better understand what's going on when you encounter them in non-CSS file contexts like configuration forms for responsive image styles or breakpoint YAML files.
By the end of this tutorial, you should have an understanding of what breakpoints are, how they are expressed in media queries, and how they are relevant in the context of Drupal.
Some, but not all, themes come with administrator-configurable settings that you can change through the UI. These might allow you to upload your own logo, choose between a couple of different pre-defined layouts, or turn features of a theme on or off. In this tutorial we’ll look at where you can find these theme settings if they exist, and how to go about changing them.
Preprocess functions are specially-named PHP functions that allow themes and modules to modify the variables passed to a Twig template file. They are commonly used by themes to alter existing variables before they are passed to the relevant template files. For example; Changing the makeup of render array so that it renders an <ol> list instead of a <ul> list. Or appending data to the label of a node depending on custom logic.
In this tutorial we'll:
- Define a new preprocess function in our theme's .theme file
- Use the preprocess functions to modify the content of an existing variable before it's used in Twig
By the end of this tutorial you should be able to define new preprocess functions in a theme (or module) that manipulate the variables for a specific Twig template file.
Theme developers often need to add or remove classes and other attributes from an HTML tag. Template files handle this with a special Attributes object that contains the attributes and their values, as well as a handful of powerful methods to help manage these attributes.
In this tutorial we’ll cover:
- Adding/removing classes from elements in a Twig template
- The attributes object
- Examples of common tasks using various helper methods on the attributes object
Clear Drupal's Cache
FreeKnowing how to clear Drupal's cache is an important skill for any developer. You'll likely find yourself doing it frequently in order to get Drupal to register the changes you make to your code, or other updates you make via the UI. It is also a good first step to trouble shooting problems with your Drupal site: Clear the cache before you do any other debugging to ensure it's not just a bad cache entry.
Making Drupal fast by default implies having caching layers and CSS and JavaScript aggregation utilities enabled out-of-the-box. As a theme developer this can be annoying, because you must clear these various caches in order to preview any changes. In addition, inspecting variables with debugging tools often produces PHP errors. We'll make some recommendations for PHP settings on your local environment that can prevent these errors from happening so often.
By the end of this tutorial, you should be able to:
- Set up your local Drupal site for theme development
- Prepare your local development environment for working on and debugging themes
Core Themes: Bartik
FreeBartik is a core theme in Drupal. As a default theme for Drupal, it serves as an instructive example of a well-developed responsive theme. In this tutorial, we'll tour and explore Bartik, identify its primary features, and explain the use case for the Bartik theme and what you can learn from it.
Core Themes: Stark
FreeStark is one of the themes bundled with Drupal. It is intentionally bare bones and its purpose is to help Drupal theme and module developers get to the heart of Drupal's system templates. In this tutorial, we'll explore Stark and its primary features and discuss the various reasons for utilizing the Stark theme.
As we learned in the What Is a Breakpoints YAML file? tutorial, modules and themes can expose their site's CSS breakpoints and media queries to other Drupal modules and themes by implementing a breakpoints YAML file. In that tutorial, you also learned about the structure of a breakpoints configuration file and why you'd want to create one. In this tutorial, we’ll walk through the process of creating an example breakpoints file step-by-step.
By the end of this lesson, you should be able to create a working breakpoints YAML file in a theme or module. We'll test it out by enabling Drupal's Responsive Image module, where we'll be able to see it listed in the configuration form for creating a new responsive image style.