Pro Drupal Development

by John K. VanDyk, Matt Westgate

Drupal is one of the most popular content management systems in use today. With it, one can create a variety of community-driven sites, including blogs, forums, wiki-style sites, and much more. Assuming that users already possess the knowledge to install and bring a standard installation online, the authors delve into Drupal internals, showing how to truly take advantage of its powerful architecture.

Genres: Programming, Technology, Nonfiction, Technical, Software, Reference, Computers

428 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Joe Tippetts]

Good foundation for using the open source Drupal content management system. I had looked into Joomla before this, but I think Drupal is much better. It's a lot more complex than Joomla, but gives you a lot more flexibility for building and theming a site.

[Sdavis]

Title says it all. Must have book for Drupal Pro's.

[James Stewart]

It's surprising given drupal's popularity that there aren't more books covering it in detail. Site launches and contributions by the likes of lullabot and bryght have pushed the CMS' profile and recent releases have emphasised the Web 2.0 potential, but a quick look at amazon reveals only four related titles. Of the four, Pro Drupal Development is definitely the most developer focussed.

This isn't a book for a drupal newbie. Going in you'll want to have spent at least a little time setting up a drupal site or two, and while there's no need to be a PHP guru the authors do presume you're not going to need help understanding their code samples. They focus on drupal's internals, with a lot of time spent writing modules, understanding the user, node, menu, theme and related systems, and a little attention for performance optimisation.

There's a lot of ground to cover and most chapters are short, giving just the essentials on each area. You'll probably want to pause from time to time to try out the code samples unless you're already experienced at writing drupal modules. Having written a number of modules and run into various problems I found I was able to focus on the new information and how it would have affected my approach, but if this is new ground the structure of the book may make it rather overwhelming.

The writers are keen to encourage their readers to read the book in order, and some chapters certainly do build on their predecessors, but the real strength of this is likely to be as a reference guide. A quick once-through will help newcomers to module development get a sense of how everything fits together, but chances are you'll then want to refer back when you actually encounter problems that a given chapter can help with.

I was disappointed not to see more coverage of testing drupal code. As I've noted elsewhere, the lack of attention paid to automated testing in the drupal community frustrates me and it seems that for a book like this to not to provide some coverage of sensible testing regimens is a missed opportunity. Similarly, it would be really good to have some coverage of deployment tips, particularly relating to upgrading active sites. Both of those seem to me like core topics for any book purporting to provide a guide for professionals, but the priorities of the book mirror those of the drupal community where neither topic appears to be a significant concern.

For any experienced developer who needs to get to grips with the insides of drupal and/or write custom extensions, this book will be invaluable. The style won't suit those looking for a broader scope or lengthier tutorials, but it will help you get to grips with each of the major components quickly and provide enough information to set you on your way. Hopefully it will also trigger further writing about drupal, which may cover more ground and help developers bring some other vital practices to their drupal work.

Disclaimer: I was sent a copy of this book for review by the publisher.

[Marcello Gorla]

E' un libro molto interessante e ben scritto. E' in inglese ma non �� molto difficile da capire, credo anche per chi non mastica perfettamente la lingua. Se riuscite a capire i tutorial su internet, questo vi dovrebbe riuscire facile.
I contenuti sono strutturati bene, non si da quasi niente per scontato, ma sicuramente non �� fatto per chi vuole installare drupal per la prima volta e capire a cosa serve: �� un libro per chi vuole estendere drupal con le proprie capacit�� di sviluppatore/programmatore.
Secondo me �� una risorsa utile sia per chi fa programmazione che per chi fa temi, nella mia breve esperienza di un paio di anni posso dire che Dicisamente le due cose prima o poi si trovano a coincidere in qualche punto della progettazione.
Avevo gi�� tentato di fare qualche giochetto con un modulo scritto da me, e pensavo fosse una cosa molto complicata. Leggere questo libro mi ha fatto ricredere: Drupal �� talmente ben strutturato che capirne le logiche attraverso questo libro diventa una cosa quasi semplice.

Per informazione di tutti, a me �� stato consigliato da due ragazzi della chat di http://www.drupalitalia.org/

[Patrick]

I see a bunch of people saying that this isn't a book for those new to drupal, but I disagree. I didn't know anything about drupal until I picked this up, and I'm glad that it was the book that was given to me. Any others that I've checked out in the time since -- well, they pale in comparison. And to be explicit, I knew a TINY bit of PHP and MySQL beforehand, but only at a rudimentary level, and I think I could've learned that as I went if I needed to. Keep in mind that this review is coming from a guy who has always been computarily-inclined!

Highly recommended!

[Jon]

(I may have gotten the edition wrong. I read the Drupal 6 version.)

This is one of the denser coding books I've ever read. I'm not sure if it was really informative or just badly organized. I found myself flipping forward and back a couple pages constantly just to double check things or to make sure it wouldn't gloss over something confusing. O'Reilly books don't do that to me. I think this book had a ton of info, but it may just be bad scientific writing that seeks to make the writer sound formidable rather than teach the reader anything new.

[tigerstorm]

oh my god. this book is bad-ly written. the writer could not think a better way to present how to code.

we can find :
1. error in sql code
2. unclosed php tag ?> in codes
3. uncleared directory structure.

the writer should learn how to tell other person about his minds in a structured way.

[Bob]

Pretty good...but you MUST have a programming background to get something out of this as well as many hands-on hours with Drupal. I have the latter, but not the former, so it was minimally helpful to me.

Definitely not a book for 'regular guys' trying to learn Drupal...programmers only need apply for this one....it's basically targeted at the large internal "geek community" at Drupal.org.

[Derek Bridge]

So this is a book for people who want to do a bit of Drupal coding, not for the noobie. VanDyk clearly knows his way around the Drupal framework, and I can imagine consulting this book carefully as the need arises. Personally, I would have preferred a more case-study-oriented presentation in addition to the topic-oriented one.

[Robbt E]

Great overview of how Drupal really works. Frustrating in some senses because the pace of development really makes the usefulness of it limited in terms of really delving into the latest Drupal developments.

[Jennifer]

Excellent introduction to Drupal. It started to come together for me when I read the first half of this book and used it as a guide to writing my first module (for D5 ... which is not the same version as that covered in the book ... but it still helped a lot).

[Phowley]

lame

only works for drupal 5 which you should forget about. i wasted my money on this book, get the second edition which works with drupal 6. Drupal 7 is coming out soon so I'm not sure what will happen with that book - but Drupal, no matter what, is worth learning = major time saver

[Cathay]

This is not a book to read cover to cover, but I refer to it now and again in my Drupal journey. Where some of the info seems too technical at times, it also becomes clearer as my knowledge and experience deepen.

[Charlene]

With the shift to Drupal 7 I'm not sure how helpful this is going to be. Very good for working with 6. So many functions are radically different in 7, though. I'm hoping for a good book that lays out the differences.

[James]

*This review refers to an older edition of the book.*

A great introduction to Drupal, but also an accessible way into MVC, version control, the philosophy behind open-source, collaborative software and even jQuery. As a newbie, I found this a very fulfilling read.

[barry]

What can I say? Bread and butter "reading." Gotta learn, gotta survive. This gets at the guts. Drupal geeks need only apply.

[Firdaus mubarik]

this explain what I want from Drupal. So Drupal Dev, you must read this!!! Oh, I get the copy from torrent.

[Fahmi Adib]

great !!

[Chad Henderson]

Excellent resource for learning the more advanced uses of drupal. Highly recommended.

[Julia]

This is the best Drupal book for developers. I bought it about a year ago and look at it at least once a day. I can't wait for the 2nd edition.

[Mark Shropshire]

Awesome! A great book that steps the reader through writing Drupal modules + much more. Hope the Drupal 6 edition will be out soon.

[Rob]

Awesome resource and introduction to Drupal. These guys rock!

[Ardi Ardianto]

Quite good this book. Yup, i'm still using this book as a guide though.... ;P

[Sofyanuli]

I think drupal better than joomla

[Vs]

Good introduction, explains many concepts, covers version 6. The real knowledge comes with looking at the code, though.

[Tom]

Excellent book on developing for Drupal.

[Stephen Lovell]

Good Book.

[Lazaros]

Definitely a must read for any candidate to drupal development, but still it covers the basics. Useful from cover to cover (including the covers).
Downsides? Not thick enough!

[Aki Björklund]

Kindle formatting is horrible.

[Joaquin Lippincott]

A technical book that actually knows it's audience. Well-written and with an abundance of good examples. It's the Drupal bible.