Posted by Jack on 07/25/2010 - 8:42am
Presented by Frank Carey (frankcarey)
- In the beginning, Drupal was very code centric
- if you wanted to make something you coded a module, relied in hooks API, etc
- Content ruled the land (the database), but modules still stored many settings in the database
- Content in Drupal - nodes, friends, comments, votes, users, messages
- Then came the GUI-la Monsters - Flexinode, Views, CCK, Contemplate, Rules, Context - things you'd normally do with code, but now could do through the UI
- Config settings include variables, CCK, permissions, views, contexts, panels, blocks, and rules
- Why should this stuff be in code and not the DB?
- How do you track changes within the database?
- How do you revert back when you make a mistake?
- How do you reuse configurations?
- How can you work as a team?
- How can you update settings across sites?
- If your settings/config are in code, you can use version control to handle those thing
- take your pick, but pick something! CVS (going out of use though), Subversion, Git, Bazzar, Mercurial
- How do we get stuff into code?
- Some modules provide their own custom export and import functionality - views migrate rules
- some are leveraging ctools export api (paenls, context, etc)
- some are adding exportables to other modules or tables (Input Formats and Strongarm)
Ctools exportables
- Tool attempts to solve the common problem of handling exportables.
- Defining exportables structure
- Getting the data from the DB and creating the xportable object
- importing the data from either db or code
- Ctools exportables
- Need a persistent, unique identifier in the table that contains the object you want to export (the machine name)
- Implement a few lines into hook_schema() or hook_schema_alter() to get ctools functionality
- So what the heck is Features?
- Features is basically an exportables manager
- It creates "features" modules, which are really just normal modules (features is not a hard dependency
- allows for a gui interface to choose what things you want to export per feature
- it provides drush integration to easily update and revert changes from the CLI
- What should a feature consist of?
- Look for logical sections and atomic functionality
- Examples: Blog, Gallery, Users, Content Type X - these are features on the site that are comprised of content types, views, blocks, etc that come together to create one complete feature on your site
- Can be traditional code as well: stuff that used to go in helper modules, additional theming, etc. All of Drupal's hooks are available to Features.
- In the beginning, Drupal was very code centric
- if you wanted to make something you coded a module, relied in hooks API, etc
- Content ruled the land (the database), but modules still stored many settings in the database
- Content in Drupal - nodes, friends, comments, votes, users, messages
- Then came the GUI-la Monsters - Flexinode, Views, CCK, Contemplate, Rules, Context - things you'd normally do with code, but now could do through the UI
- Config settings include variables, CCK, permissions, views, contexts, panels, blocks, and rules
- Why should this stuff be in code and not the DB?
- How do you track changes within the database?
- How do you revert back when you make a mistake?
- How do you reuse configurations?
- How can you work as a team?
- How can you update settings across sites?
- If your settings/config are in code, you can use version control to handle those thing
- take your pick, but pick something! CVS (going out of use though), Subversion, Git, Bazzar, Mercurial
- How do we get stuff into code?
- Some modules provide their own custom export and import functionality - views migrate rules
- some are leveraging ctools export api (paenls, context, etc)
- some are adding exportables to other modules or tables (Input Formats and Strongarm)
Ctools exportables
- Tool attempts to solve the common problem of handling exportables.
- Defining exportables structure
- Getting the data from the DB and creating the xportable object
- importing the data from either db or code
- Ctools exportables
- Need a persistent, unique identifier in the table that contains the object you want to export (the machine name)
- Implement a few lines into hook_schema() or hook_schema_alter() to get ctools functionality
- So what the heck is Features?
- Features is basically an exportables manager
- It creates "features" modules, which are really just normal modules (features is not a hard dependency
- allows for a gui interface to choose what things you want to export per feature
- it provides drush integration to easily update and revert changes from the CLI
- What should a feature consist of?
- Look for logical sections and atomic functionality
- Examples: Blog, Gallery, Users, Content Type X - these are features on the site that are comprised of content types, views, blocks, etc that come together to create one complete feature on your site
- Can be traditional code as well: stuff that used to go in helper modules, additional theming, etc. All of Drupal's hooks are available to Features.
Notes from Features Demo
- When you look at your list of features with diff module enabled, you can see how a feature has been overridden within the current configuration
- Turning on Strongarm allows you to export variables (from the variables table) into a feature
Command-line features
- Features exposes many commands to Drush that can then be used from the command line
- features revert - revert a feature from the command line; this reverts changes made within the UI to settings that you've configured within a feature
Features/Exportable Gotchas
- Some exportables can't be exported more than once (e.g. can't re-export a default view)
- Features-revert-all can be dangerous, blow away work
- Not everything is exportable yet
- Revert-all doesn't work if there's no diff (fixed recently in dev)
- Dependencies can be tricky.
Developments to watch out for
- Better core exportability in Drupal 8
- Use of UUIDs as unique IDs
- More end-product modules that implement a fully featured user experience
- hook_features_alter() - allow partial overrides that are exportable as well
- Easy Features = Better Install Profiles
Additional Things to See
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