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Drupal 7 Module Development

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Developing for <strong>Drupal</strong> 7<br />

Using this, developers can set custom themes and modules, change installation<br />

parameters, and generally streamline the process of installing sophisticated<br />

<strong>Drupal</strong> sites.<br />

Simple test<br />

Programmatically testing code is a well-established practice in the software<br />

development industry. In <strong>Drupal</strong> 7, it is a capability of the core <strong>Drupal</strong> distribution.<br />

Using the Simple Test framework, developers can now use functional and unit tests<br />

to validate their code.<br />

We employ testing throughout this book. In fact, we will write some of our first tests<br />

in Chapter 2.<br />

Blocks<br />

Along with the primary content, most web pages also have additional content<br />

displayed along the top, bottom, or sides of the page. <strong>Drupal</strong>'s block subsystem<br />

handles the configuration and display of these units of content.<br />

Most of this functionality is concentrated in the block module, and we will develop<br />

our first custom block in Chapter 2.<br />

Other subsystems<br />

In this section, we have provided some basic information on several high-profile<br />

subsystems. However, this list is not exhaustive. There are numerous others, and<br />

even some very important ones (like Views) that are not in core, but provided by<br />

third party modules.<br />

Some of these other subsystems will be introduced and discussed throughout this<br />

book. However, <strong>Drupal</strong> is a sophisticated system, and no book of a manageable<br />

length can go into all of the details. For that reason, we provide references<br />

throughout the book pointing developers to the appropriate resources on<br />

the web and elsewhere.<br />

Tools for developing <strong>Drupal</strong> code<br />

<strong>Drupal</strong> is a sophisticated platform, and from the glimpse above we can see already<br />

that there are numerous systems and structures to keep track of. In this section, we<br />

try to provide tools that simplify or streamline the development process.<br />

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