Pro Drupal Development

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxv

   PDF

2. How Drupal Works

   Pages 1-10

3. Writing a Module

   Pages 11-21

4. Module-Specific Settings

   Pages 23-30

5. The Menu System

   Pages 31-48

6. Working with Databases

   Pages 49-62

7. Working with Users

   Pages 63-81

8. Working with Nodes

   Pages 83-105

9. The Theme System

   Pages 107-130

10. Working with Blocks

    Pages 131-145

11. The Form API

    Pages 147-184

12. Manipulating User Input: The Filter System

    Pages 185-196

13. Searching and Indexing Content

    Pages 197-212

14. Working with Files

    Pages 213-219

15. Working with Taxonomy

    Pages 221-241

16. Caching

    Pages 243-252

17. Sessions

    Pages 253-260

18. Using jQuery

    Pages 261-277

19. Localization

    Pages 279-289

20. XML-RPC

    Pages 291-299

Drupal is one of the most popular content management systems in use today. With it, you can create a variety of community-driven sites, including blogs, forums, wiki-style sites, and much more. Pro Drupal Development was written to arm you with knowledge to customize your Drupal installation however you see fit. The book assumes that you already possess the knowledge to install and bring a standard installation online. Then authors John VanDyk and Matt Westgate delve into Drupal internals, showing you how to truly take advantage of its powerful architecture.

Youll learn how to create your own modules, develop your own themes, and produce your own filters. You'll learn the inner workings of each key part of Drupal, including user management, sessions, the node system, caching, and the various APIs available to you. Of course, your Drupal-powered site isnt effective until you can efficiently serve pages to your visitors. As such, the authors have included the information you need to optimize your Drupal installation to perform well under high-load situations. Also featured is information on Drupal security and best practices, as well as integration of Ajax and the internationalization of your Drupal web site. Simply put, if you are working with Drupal at all, then you need this book.

• This book is written by Drupal core developers.
• Drupal architecture and behavior are mapped out visually.
• Common pitfalls are identified and addressed.
• Chapters provide regular discussion and reference to why things work they way they do, not just how.
• Features a foreword by Dries Buytaert, Drupal founder.

• Ajax
• Community
• Drupal
• Node.js
• XML
• content management
• content management system
• databases
• development
• forum
• jQuery
• themes

From the reviews:

"This book investigates in detail the inner workings of Drupal. It teaches readers how to add new functionalities and features to their sites, and how to customize or improve existing ones. … The structure of each chapter is clear and simple, with a summary at the end, some tips and notes in frames, many pictures and schemas and generally thorough explanations. … this is a very interesting and well-written book. It is a must-read for anybody dealing with content management systems, especially Drupal." (O. Lecarme, ACM Computing Reviews, September, 2008)

John K. VanDyk has been a Drupal developer since 2004. In 2005, he organized the first Drupal conference in Antwerp, Belgium, with Drupal founder Dries Buytaert. John has contributed several modules to Drupal including the actions, workflow, publish, subscribe, and pubcookie modules and has been instrumental in the design of Drupal's Content Construction Kit. John's day job is as an entomology professor and systems analyst at Iowa State University, where he teaches undergraduate courses about insects. In his spare time, when not hacking on Drupal, John enjoys squash hunting and raising children.

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