Pro Drupal Development, Second Edition (Beginning from Novice to Professional)

by John K. VanDyk

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Editorial Reviews
Product Description

Widely praised for its in–depth coverage of Drupal internals, bestselling Pro Drupal Development has been completely updated for Drupal 6 in this latest edition, and there are even more tricks of the trade to help you further yourself as a professional Drupal developer.

Assuming you already know how to install and bring a standard installation online, John K. VanDyk gives you everything else you need to customize your Drupal installation however you see fit. Pro Drupal Development, Second Edition delves deep into Drupal internals, showing you how to take full advantage of its powerful architecture.

What you’ll learn

Find out how to create your own modules, develop your own themes, and produce your own filters.
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.
Discover how to optimize your Drupal installation to perform well under high–load situations.
Gain the knowledge needed to secure your Drupal installation and other best practice techniques.
Learn to integrate Ajax into and internationalize your Drupal web site.

Who is this book for?

Web developers maintaining and creating sites with Drupal. It is assumed that you already know the basics of Drupal and are able to install and bring up a basic installation. This book takes you deeper into the internals of Drupal and teaches how to tweak and modify it in order to create that perfect web site. Simply put, if you are working with Drupal, you need Pro Drupal Development, Second Edition.

About the Apress Pro Series

The Apress Pro series books are practical, professional tutorials to keep you on and moving up the professional ladder.

You have gotten the job, now you need to hone your skills in these tough competitive times. The Apress Pro series expands your skills and expertise in exactly the areas you need. Master the content of a Pro book, and you will always be able to get the job done in a professional development project. Written by experts in their field, Pro series books from Apress give you the hard–won solutions to problems you will face in your professional programming career.

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All Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1 out of 5 stars

Needs work, 2008-12-16
I was very excited for this text, however after purchasing and reading, I was greatly disappoined and frustrated at the lack of validation done to the examples. Not only do they not work, they are often at odds with the other standards and suggestions from the drupal community.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5 out of 5 stars

The best tech book I've bought since Programming Perl, 2008-12-12
I don't like reading programming books. I've been developing software for over 20 years with a dozen different languages so I've no patience for wading through obligatory "Hello, world" exercises and elementary programming examples. But with Drupal having such a bizarre API I forced myself to start reading Pro Drupal Development from the beginning rather than cherry picking the data as I normally do.

If you're an experienced developer, Pro Drupal Development is just what you're looking for. From the first chapter, Van Dyk immerses you in the myriad details of Drupal module development -- its hook architecture, the Forms API, content types and how to extend other modules. By the end of Chapter 1 you will have already created a pretty useful module. In fact, there are several very nice module projects in this book. By the time you turn the last page you will have a fairly in-depth knowledge of nearly every facet of Drupal development, from theming to caching to security to localization to JQuery.

Beware: this isn't a book for novice developers nor those new to PHP and SQL. On the other hand, experienced developers are going to find themselves having to unlearn some habits and assumptions in order to make full use Drupal 6's heavyweight APIs.

Thanks to this book and three months of spare time, I'm just now putting the final polish on a fairly complex Drupal 6 module for warehousing, searching and geolocating RSS feeds.

My only criticism is that I originally bought the First Edition (for Drupal 5) about two weeks before Drupal 6 went into production release. So I had to buy the Second Edition as well and I read it cover to cover too. I suspect I'll be handing over the plastic when Drupal 7 is released as well.

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

5 out of 5 stars

Does not cover Drupal 5, 2008-11-11
This is an excellent book, covering significantly more material than its predecessor, which was for Drupal 5. Note, however, that it does not illustrate differences between Drupal 5 & 6, so if you are doing Drupal 5 development you have to get the first version as well. This wasn't clear to me before the purchase.

1 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1 out of 5 stars

Not for begginer, 2008-11-11
I am completely new to Drupal and bought this book thinking that I could learn from it. Not a very good book for newbies on the Drupal platform.

Definetely, I will have to return this one. The Pro really stand for Professional Drupal Developer.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5 out of 5 stars

The essential Drupal coding book, 2008-10-09
If you're new to Drupal and just want to learn how to be an effective admin, this isn't for you.

If you're looking to customize Drupal by adding new functionality, new node types, advanced themeing the **you must get this book**.

Clearly written. Useful examples. Accurate. Detailed backmatter for professional Drupal coding practices.

I've used Drupal since v. 4.7, since 2005. My copy of this book's first edition is dogeared and well-thumbed. This second edition is even better, and I keep it right by my desk. It's helped me out of many a jam.

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