Composer is the preferred dependency management solution for PHP. List your project's dependencies in a composer.json file and, after issuing a few commands in the CLI, Composer will automatically download your project's dependencies and set up autoloading for you. Composer is analogous to NPM in the Node.js world, or Bundler in the Ruby world.

Drupal core uses Composer to manage non-Drupal dependencies like Guzzle and PHPUnit. An increasing number of contributed modules also use Composer to integrate third party PHP libraries into Drupal.

This series provides guidance for Drupal developers and site builders who would like to learn to use Composer to build and maintain a Drupal application.

It covers high-level concepts about Composer and walks you step-by-step through creating a new application, downloading PHP libraries, and implementing them using Composer!

It also covers Drupal-specific Composer configuration and provides guidance for accomplishing common Drupal tasks like updating core and installing a new module.

In this tutorial we'll:

• Familiarize ourselves with the general concepts of dependency management
• Learn about Composer and the role it plays in a PHP/Drupal project
• Learn about some advantages and disadvantages of using Composer

By the end of this tutorial you should be able to explain what Composer is, what it's used for, and make the case for using it in your own projects.

Today's Drupal developer needs more than just a text editor and FTP. Best practice Drupal development involves a suite of tools, processes, and more than one server environment.

This tutorial is directed toward an audience that is not familiar with best practices in Drupal Development and methods involving version control with Git, IDEs, local development environments, and deployment environments (i.e. stage, live). Here we're providing a high-level overview of these topics with links to dive deeper if you need more information.

In this tutorial, we'll cover:

• Introduce Version Control Systems such as Git
• Discuss how Git can be used to deploy to remote web servers
• Review programming-centric text editors and Integrated Development Environments
• Identify the need for a local development environment.
• Explain shared deployment environments including production and stage.

In this exercise you will demonstrate your ability to attach JavaScript to themes, and use Drupal behaviors to enhance the functionality of a website.

In this exercise you will demonstrate that you understand the concept of responsive CSS and the methods which can be used to implement it in a Drupal theme.

Create a custom module and alter the content on a node page using a hook and existing theme functions.

Identify and use preprocessors by creating a custom breadcrumb trail on a page, and reduce and refactor code in custom modules.

Create a new module for movie imports, which will display a form when the user navigates to a page.

Make SQL queries in Drupal, make HTTP requests to external websites, and use this data to validate a form.

Use a form submit hook to pass information down the form API and create a node programmatically.

Create an install hook to pre-define a list of films to import.

Create a custom Drush command, which makes use of re-usable functions within our Movie Import module.

Create an administration form to save information about how the movie importer works by using variables.

Create a permissions hook to secure access to pages within Drupal.

Learn how to use Features to manage configuration changes and understand the configuration change workflow in a team environment.

Manage text formats and filters and add a WYSIWYG editor.

Configure basic settings which affect performance, and perform basic analysis to understand what might be affecting website performance.

Use hooks to update the database tables and alter form elements.

Create autocomplete fields and menu hooks.

Add user data to the database from an existing form.

Display custom content using a render array.