Better web designs reflect fully-fledged and appealing websites. But, for getting such fascinating designs, Drupal plugin development plays a very significant role in the realm of the web designing. The main use of the plugins is to extend the websites functionality, defining blocks, providing API fields and performing several effects on an image like scaling & rotating. Plugins refer as a set of code components that add some advanced features to an application and also allow the developers to manage these components. So, get a lot more about the concepts of plugin development through this post.
What is the importance of plugins in the website?
The functioning of plugins is somewhat similar to hooks. Plugins are used to enhance elements in a module that enhance the functionality and also provide a different look to your website. Adding all the special features & functionality in a website has made Drupal plugin development an important method in the process of the web development. Drupal based websites consist of three kinds of modules that are as follows:-
1.Core
2.Contributed
3.Custom
The above-mentioned modules are also known as 3 Cs. The core modules are approved by both the developers and the community. The contributed modules are shared under GPL (General Public License) and the Drupal community contributes a lot in writing these modules. Finally, the custom modules are used for a specific purpose and created by the Drupal developers.
Steps for creating blocks
The major steps used for creating blocks as far as Drupal plugin development is considered are as follows:-
- The first step is to create the plugin file
- Implementation of several block methods in the BlockBase class for providing custom functionality
The several functions or methods used in step 2 are as follows:-
- access()
- blockBuild()
- blockForm()
- blockValidate()
- blockSubmit()
In the Drupal plugin development Services, TDD (Test-driven Development) is becoming a popular methodology for building a new and custom module that starts with writing the test cases.
How to build a new module?
Creating a new module includes a series of steps that have been described below:-
- The first step is to name the Drupal modules. The names must be both human and machine readable.
- The next step after assigning the names is to create the module directories. The files contained in these directories include .INFO & .MODULE.
- Strict emphasis must be on coding standards for writing the code. Indenting, comments, functions, variables, spaces, operators, etc. are used with proper care in the standards coding.
- Use of Doxygen documentation that helps to extract API from source code.
- Using t() function & translations that help to translate strings from one language to another.
So, the above-mentioned steps are highly crucial regarding Drupal plugin development and must be implemented in an effective manner for getting better web designs.
Posted By – Drupal Web Development Team