The Migrate module itself contains some excellent examples of data migrations implementing the various APIs provided by the module and serves as the canonical documentation for how to write a migration. In this lesson we'll take a look at the beer and wine import examples provided with the migrate module as a way to familiarize ourselves with the concepts discussed earlier and to be able to see the code that makes up a basic migration before attempting to write our own. In practice these examples serve as a great starting point and can often times be copy/pasted and adjusted for your own needs.
Additional resources
In this lesson we'll take a look at running migrations via drush rather than via the Migrate module's UI. We'll take a look at the commands provided by the Migrate module and talk about what they do. Then we'll practice running, rolling back, and otherwise interacting with migrations via drush commands. Throughout the lesson we'll learn about some of the functionality you get from running migrations via drush that are not provided by the UI, like the ability to specify a single record to migrate with the --idlist flag. Finally we'll learn about why in most cases drush is a better tool for running large data migrations because of the limitations imposed on the UI. Pay close attention to this lesson since throughout the remainder of this series we'll be running all of our migrations via drush.
Additional resources
In this lesson we'll take a more in-depth look at the migrate module's UI with a focus on being able to identify and execute custom migrations. For now we'll work with the provided example migrations just so that we have something to work with. Throughout the lesson we'll learn how to run a migration to import it's data into Drupal, rollback a migration that was previously run in order to set a clean slate, and other ways we can interact with a migration via the UI. Then we'll discuss some of the challenges inherit in running migrations via the UI and Drupal's Batch API and how to identify them.
Additional resources
This lesson includes a short presentation that explains the basics terminology and architecture of the migrate module and the components that make up a custom data migration. We'll talk about the Extract / Transform / Load process and how it relates to data migrations, the types of data sources that the migration module can read from, and a little bit about how the code in both the migrate module and our own custom migrations will be organized.
Additional resources
In this lesson we'll cover downloading and installing the Migrate module (version 7.x-2.6) and ensuring that our local environment is ready to be able to run migrations via both the UI and drush. Once that's setup we'll take a high level look at the migrate module's UI and drush commands to familiarize ourselves with the tools that we'll be using throughout the rest of the series. This will also help formalize some of concepts introduced in the previous lesson.
Additional resources
Migrate module project page
migrate-7.x-2.6-rc1 download
Migrate module documentation
Introduction to Drush series
Drupalize.Me Migrate module series code on GitHub
This series is focused on using the Migrate module to import data that exists in various different sources into a Drupal 7 website. The Migrate module provides an extremely flexible and robust framework for accessing data from various sources and importing or migrating that data to Drupal. With built in support for creating core Drupal data types likes nodes, users, and taxonomy terms, the Migrate module is one of the best solutions available for importing content into Drupal.
This series kicks off with Joe Shindelar explaining the basic components that make up a data migration, and the terminology and code that is specific to the Migrate module. Then continues with a series of lessons that take you from installing the Migrate module to writing and running your own custom data migration.
Throughout the series Joe teaches us how to run a data migration using both the Migrate module's UI and drush, and some of the plusses and minuses of both methods. Joe also talks about the various different sources, or types of data, from which the Migrate module can read data and how to map the unique fields in a row of source data to their corresponding Drupal content types and fields.
By migrating from a single source into two different Drupal content types we'll also have the opportunity to learn about creating relationships during a migration and mapping the resulting information to an entity reference field. During the course of writing a custom migration Joe will show us how and where we can add code to perform additional runtime data munging during our import process. We'll learn about importing data into multi-value fields, and even providing defaults for fields that don't have information. Then we'll look at some of the tools the migrate module provides for collaborating with team members in order to create a successful migration path.
Finally we'll wrap up the series by looking at a couple of different techniques for debugging our migrations and dealing with pesky source material that just doesn't want to be imported.
Because this series is focused primarily on writing custom data migrations, and since the Migrate module itself requires at least some amount of code to be written to perform a migration, it is suggested that students be familiar with PHP and basic Object Oriented Programming techniques. Although not required to run a migration, Joe uses the drush command line tool extensively in this series. If you need a refresher on using drush take a moment to watch our drush series.
Additional resources
This series taught you how to use two of Drupal’s fundamental “building block” modules: Field and Views. These modules constitute the cornerstone of Drupal’s power and are used extensively throughout the rest of the Using Drupal series. In this summary we'll take a tour the Epic University site we've built to discuss how we built it. We'll wrap things up with a review of the modules and resources we've covered in this series.
Additional resources
The basic job website that we’ve built only touches on the surface of the capability of Field and Views. There are a lot of possibilities for extending the functionality of this job site by adding more fields to both the Job and Job Application content types. In this lesson we'll review some other modules to explore:
- Automatic Node Titles
- Node Reference URL Widget
- Content Access
- Field Permissions
Additional resources
With our basic Applications view built, we have our default display. We also need another faculty display on the site. This second list will be largely the same as the default list, but it needs to show up as a tab on a job posting node, and only list the applications which relate to that particular job. We're going to need to create a new display, and override certain settings, plus add in a contextual filter, in order to get this view completed.
Additional resources
In this lesson we tackle the last display we need for our Applications view, by building a block for our applicants. This has us creating a new type of display, a block, as well as continuing to work with overrides. We also have to change the permissions on this particular display so regular users can see it, but at the same time we only want the view to show a user their own applications.
Additional resources
The Applications view will serve both as a tool for administrators and as a reference for users, with three different displays. In this lesson, we'll start to build the Applications view by creating the default display with our first listing, which is a master list of all the applications on the site. To pull in all of the information we're going to need, we'll begin working with Views relationships.
Additional resources
The Views module provides listings of data on your site: users, comments, nodes, and more. Any listing of data provided by the Views module is called a view, and most Drupal websites today use Views in many different ways. In this lesson we'll get an overview of the Views module, including some specific concepts and terminology like Data Types and Displays, along with a tour of the major view settings and what they do.
Additional resources
The requirements of our site include two different main views. One view is a public-facing list, showing all the available jobs to users of the site. In this lesson we'll create our first view by enabling the modules we need, walking through the Views wizard to get our basic view in place, and then modifying various settings for our fields and working with contextual filters.
Additional resources
Now that the university is able to create job postings, it would be helpful if prospective employees could submit resumés to the positions in which they’re interested. In this lesson we will build out the Job Application content type. We will need to add another reference field, this time a node reference, to tie the applications to the correct job. To make it possible for applicants to submit their resumé we'll also need to add an upload field so that applicants can upload a document of specified file types.
Additional resources
The References module is a contributed module that allows you to create relationships between nodes and/or users. In this lesson we will take a look at the References project, explaining how References work, and then discuss some similar modules out there you may want to investigate.
Additional resources
Now we need to add a primary contact for the job position we've created. This will usually be the person creating the entry, but we’ll allow the user to enter any of the possible faculty members on the site. This will be done as a “User reference” field, provided by the contributed References module.
Additional resources
For usability, it’s often important to display forms and page contents in a specific order, and to add formatting so that it’s more clear what data is being presented. In this lesson we'll modify our Job content by reordering the fields, changing the field label display, and looking at how we can hide particular fields.
Additional resources
To build this site, we’ll need to go beyond the default “Basic page” and “Article” content types offered by Drupal core. To get started with our job posting website, let’s think about the different content types needed to build all the functionality that we require. The site requires two different types: a Job Posting and a Job Application. In this lesson we'll map out our content type needs, and see what fields were going to use. Then we'll create the Job content type, making sure we add needed fields and set permissions so that it is working as expected.
Additional resources
The Field module provides an extremely flexible framework for creating forms to enter content. In past versions of Drupal, this was provided by a contributed module called the Content Construction Kit, or CCK, but this now a feature that comes with Drupal core itself. In this lesson we're going to get an overview of the Field module and the pieces it provides, including field types, input widgets, displays, view modes, and formatters. We'll also take a look at reusing existing fields and what that means.