Module Development

What's New in Drupal 8: Entity Field API for Drupal 8

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We're keeping this page up as a courtesy to folks who may need to refer to old instructions. We don't plan to update this page.

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Sprout Video

This video was part of a series of presentations produced in anticipation of Drupal 8's official release. To learn about Drupal 8's new Entity API, take a look at our Entity API series.

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nid: 2792
title: Entity API series
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In this presentation we're going to take a high-level look at the new Drupal 8 Entity Field API. This is an improved version of the Entity API and Field API that was started in Drupal 7. Entities are the new recommended way of dealing with data in Drupal and as such, familiarizing yourself with the workings of the Entity API will be important when it comes time to store or retrieve data from your custom modules. It's a big change from what we're used to in Drupal—directly accessing the database via the database abstraction layer—but the Entity Field API also has some distinct advantages.

This presentation covers:

  • Improvements to the Entity API
  • Improvements to the Field API
  • Handlers, Controllers, and ways to manipulate entities
  • Discussion of new types of things we can build with these changes
  • What you can do to start learning now

After watching this presentation you should be able to articulate the improvements made to the Entity Field API in Drupal 8 and start to understand how you might make use of it in your own code. We'll also cover some of the things you can start doing now in order to prepare yourself to use the Entity Field API in Drupal 8.

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