In this tutorial we’re going to walk through the process of creating a custom configuration entity in Drupal in a custom module. We'll be using Drupal Console's generate:entity:config command to create and update the files in our Transcode Profile example module. After Drupal Console has generated and updated the files for our configuration entity, we'll walk through each file and see how they define data structure, metadata, an administrative interface, and menu links for a configuration entity in Drupal.

By the end of this tutorial, you should be able to:

• Use Drupal Console to generate a configuration entity
• Identify files associated with a configuration entity and summarize the purpose and function of the code inside each file
• Find other examples of configuration entities in Drupal core

As a developer, within a module, you can define settings for the module and provide a configuration form for administrators to update the values of those settings. In this tutorial, we'll create a configuration settings form for a module and define default values for each setting. We'll use Drupal Console, a command-line utility for Drupal to do some code scaffolding and speed up the process.

By the end of this lesson, you should be able to get a basic settings form up and running inside a custom module complete with default settings and a menu link.

As we learned in Configuration Data Types, simple configuration is suitable for storing module settings as boolean values, integers, or text strings in one or more key/value pairs. In this tutorial, we'll walk through creating a schema and providing default configuration to store initial settings that a module needs to function.

Not every environment or copy of a site you may be working on will be created equally. You may want to enable logging on a development site or need to use different API keys depending on the environment. But you also need to make sure that your instance-specific configuration overrides don't make it into the database, mistakenly get exported, or compromise security.

In this tutorial, you will learn how to:

• Override the global $config array in settings.php (or settings.local.php)
• Retrieve overridden (immutable) configuration (read-only mode)
• Retrieve original (mutable) configuration for updating (read/write mode)
• Set dynamic values for configuration instead of overriding values

When you create a module for Drupal, it can be useful to provide default configuration. This can be settings for a form, the placement of a block, or something more complex like the default image styles provided by the Image module in core. A module can provide default configuration for simple configuration or configuration entities.

In this tutorial, we will cover:

• Possible locations for default configuration
• What happens with configuration when a module is installed or uninstalled
• Managing dependencies in configuration
• Where to find examples of default configuration

Configuration entities are suitable for creating user-defined configuration, such as image styles, views, content types, etc. A configuration entity type is defined by a module, default configuration is provided by that module as well as any other module, and then users can create zero or more configuration entities through Drupal's administrative UI.

In this tutorial, you will learn about:

• What configuration entities are
• Configuration entity types versus configuration entities
• An example in core: image style
• Overview of the process of creating your own configuration entity types in a module

When working on configuration in a module, whether as part of a migration that uses Migrate Plus configuration entities, or while developing custom configuration entities, you'll often need to re-import the configuration stored in the .yml files of the modules config/install/ or config/optional/ directories. This is tricky though, because Drupal only reads in those default configuration settings when the module is first enabled. So any changes you make to those files after the module has been installed will not be reflected without these workarounds.

Knowing how to do this can improve the developer experience of adding (or debugging) the default configuration that's provided with a module. Or for anyone using Migrate Plus configuration entities as part of a migration.

In this tutorial we'll:

• Learn about the Configuration Development module
• Look at how you can use Drush to perform a partial configuration import
• Write an implementation of hook_uninstall() to remove a module's configuration when it's uninstalled

By the end of this tutorial you should be able to re-import the configuration provided by a module without having to uninstall and then reinstall the module.

Now that we have some default simple configuration stored in a settings YAML file, let's utilize it in a form that our site administrators can use to update those values. We'll make use of some services and methods in Drupal's Configuration API in order to retrieve, update, and save simple configuration values with a form.

In this tutorial, we'll cover how to load configuration entity data in a module. We'll change the AdminSettingsForm.php we created and replace the simple textfield we were using with a dropdown select list. Then we'll use data from our Transcode Profile module's configuration entity, loaded by the EntityTypeManager via the services container, to choose our preferred Transcode Profile.

By the end of this tutorial, you should be able to:

• Know how to load configuration entities using EntityTypeManager via the services container
• Update the AdminSettingsForm.php to use a dropdown select list
• Save your preferred transcode profile from a list of transcode profile entities
• Update the default configuration provided with the demo module to include transcode profiles

Containers are sandboxed applications that can be run anywhere, no matter the underlying host OS. Docker containers are quite different from VMs in a number of ways that need to be understood before we can use them to develop Drupal sites.

In this tutorial, we'll:

• Define a container
• Explain how a container is a more limited environment than a VM

In addition to using one of the existing generators, developers can write their own Drush generator commands. This can help speed up repetitive tasks and reduce the use of boilerplate code that is prone to human error.

Generators are provided through Drush's integration with the Drupal Code Generator project. Writing new generators isn't specific to Drush, though if you're creating generators for Drupal it is definitely easiest with Drush as a wrapper.

Similar to Drush commands, generators can be supplied by a Drupal module or declared globally. If you have a feature-specific functionality, it's best to ship your custom generator within the custom module. Otherwise, a global generator can be declared and used.

In this tutorial we'll:

• Explain the anatomy of a Drush generator
• Write a custom Drush generator for handling a site's development.services.yml file, and use it in a project

By the end of this tutorial you should understand how to create, or customize, a Drush code generator and use it in your project.

Code generators are great productivity boosters that allow generating scaffolds for common development tasks in Drupal. One of the most common use cases for generators is scaffolding the code required for a custom entity type. Custom entities require many files and complicated annotations in order to function properly. There is a lot of boilerplate code that is more-or-less the same for every entity type. Creating all the files is repetitive, time-consuming, and prone to human error. Generators can help automate this task and make creating your own custom entity types quicker.

In this tutorial we'll:

• Learn how to generate the code for a custom entity with Drush
• Learn about the options that generators provide for custom entities

By the end of this tutorial you should know how to generate custom entities with Drush.

The Drupal Entity API makes it easy to define new custom content entity types. And in most cases whenever you want to store custom content in Drupal you should use the Entity API instead of making CRUD queries directly to the database. This ensures your code is more consistent, and allows you to take advantage of all the features of the Entity API like access control, Views module integration, and automatic JSON:API support. As well as making it easier for others to extend your custom content by ensuring all the proper hooks and lifecycle events get invoked when new content items get created, updated, and deleted.

In this tutorial we'll:

• Walk through the process of creating a custom content entity

By the end of this lesson you'll be able to create your own custom content entity contained in a module.

One of Drupal's more powerful features is the fine-grained ability to control permissions and control access to content. The Entity API helps enable this functionality by providing an interface to help define access control.

In this tutorial we'll:

• Look at how access control is handled, using Drupal core as an example.
• Demonstrate how to implement access control in a custom module.
• Learn about the hooks that allow developers to modify access control for entities provided by another module.

By the end of this tutorial you should have a better understanding of the entity access control system and how to work with it.

Entities are the building blocks that make up just about everything on a Drupal site. Regardless of whether entities provide configuration information or content, they are absolutely crucial to Drupal's data model.

In this tutorial we'll:

• Look at the overall class hierarchy between the various entity types to see how they're related.
• Examine differences between configuration and content entities in the code that defines them.
• Look at some of the core code required to create an entity type.

By the end of this lesson you should be able to use an example to create a custom entity type in code.

Often when building a site in Drupal you'll find yourself wanting to display a list of nodes, or find entities created by a particular author, or locate some content based on a particular set of criteria. Rather than querying the database directly, Drupal provides a helper class, EntityQuery, to make things a bit easier. The EntityQuery class will probably look very familiar to you if you're familiar with the Database API, or the EntityFieldQuery class in Drupal 7.

In this tutorial we'll:

• Go through several examples of using EntityQuery to find subsets of content.
• Demonstrate how to iterate over the results of an EntityQuery query.

By the end of this tutorial, you should understand how to use entity queries to create custom sets of data from entities.

When learning Drupal development, it won't be long before you encounter the word "entity" and the Entity API. But what are entities in Drupal? How can you use them to build your site? When should you use the Entity API?

This tutorial will explain Drupal's Entity system from a high level. We'll look at:

• The main problems the Entity system solves
• Key terms you should know
• Key concepts we'll explore as we dive into Drupal's Entity API

By the end of this tutorial you should be able to explain the problems that the Entity API solves, and when you should use it in your own code.

Drupal includes the Symfony Validator component, and provides an Entity Validation API to assist in validating the values of fields on an entity. By using the Entity Validation API you can ensure that you're validation logic is applied to Entity CRUD operations regardless of how they are triggered. Whether editing an Entity via a Form API form, or creating a new Entity via the REST API, the same validation code will be used.

Using the Entity Validation API in order to validate the value of a field on an entity requires:

• Defining (or choosing) a constraint plugin
• Defining (or choosing) a validation plugin
• Adding the constraint to the field definition

In this tutorial, we'll look at how this Validation API works and how it can be used in custom code to ensure our entities have properly constructed values. We'll look at how this validation works in Drupal core and how we can add our own additional constraints. We'll also see how to work with the error messages returned from the validator when our entity doesn't pass validation.

Drupal's Entity system provides several hooks that allow custom code to interact with various parts of the entity life cycle.

In this tutorial we'll:

• Examine the available hooks
• Learn how to make use of them to act on several different types of operations on individual entities

By the end if this tutorial you should have a better understanding of the hooks available to developers who want to respond to entity lifecycle operations and how to use them to customize the way specific entity types work.

On occasion you may need to modify the behavior of entity types defined by another module. Thankfully Drupal includes several alter hooks that can be used to override the behavior of another entity.

In this tutorial we will:

• Walk through the common Entity API hooks
• Look at example implementations of each
• And discuss the use cases for each

By the end of this tutorial you will have a better understanding of how to override the default behavior of an entity type provided by Drupal core (or another contributed module) within your custom code.