Drupal

Drupalcon 2008 - Szeged Hungary

Barely a month has past since the wildly successful Drupalcon Boston, but, there is no rest for Drupalcon organizers.

This past week the Drupal Association announced that the second Drupalcon of 2008 will be in lovely Szeged in the south of Hungary August 27th-30th. This is very exciting news indeed. Not only do I get to go to my second Drupalcon of the year, but, being Hungarian myself, I am excited to get to do it in Hungary.

andre

April 14th 2008 10AM
By: andre
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Simpletesting Drupal and a Simpletest Snippet

There is no question that test driven development is coming to Drupal. And it may be sooner than anyone expected.

Last week at Drupalcon 2008 Dries challenged the community: Provide 100% test coverage for Drupal core by mid may, and the code freeze can be pushed off until November.

So to help you get started in your testing - I've attached a Komodo snippet that will help create a .test file stub.

Don't know what to do with that? Want to start writing your own tests for your own modules? Great! - Check out these great resources.

andre

Introduction to unit testing
Simpletest documentation
Drupal Simpletest Module
Module Developers Guide to Simpletest
Drupal Conference Presentations (ctrl+f for simpletest)

March 10th 2008 9AM
By: andre
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Komodo Macro for creating new Drupal modules

I've been playing around with Komodo a bit lately, and have been intrigued by the tools available to customize the development environment.

One of the more powerful features in Komodo is the ability to create 'snippets', 'commands' and 'macros'. They say that whatever can be automated should be automated when developing code. The less monkey work you do the better, and snippets, commands and macros are a great way to reduce said monkey work.

As an experiment I created a macro that will create a module stub. When run, the macro asks you to name your module. It then creates the module folder, the three primary module files and a 'test' directory.

Limitations:

  • The macro is for a windows development environment.Update:Thanks to jeffG I have OS detection - but it is not tested in a non windows machine - still it should work
  • There is no error handling
  • There is no input validation
  • The macro assumes the project file is in the root of your drupal project folder

Possible Improvements:

  • Fix the limitations
  • Have the macro insert snippets of code into the files
  • Rather than 'runEncodedCommand' - break commands into Komodo 'commands' and call them in order
March 10th 2008 7AM
By: andre
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How to create a Komodo Drupal "snippet"

Last night I wrote about how Komodo 4.3 Beta Includes Drupal Specific Snippets.

Today I show you how you can create your own Snippets so that you can spend less time doing repetitive Drupal development tasks and more time writing the juicy parts of your modules.

In this video tutorial, I create a snippet for hook_link_alter.

The basics steps are:

  1. Open the Komodo Toolbox
  2. Add a new snippet from the Toolbox menu
  3. Populate the snippet with code or comments or both
  4. Implement a few snippet features (Tab Stops or Interpolation Shortcuts) to make your life even easier
February 24th 2008 6PM
By: andre
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Drupal Specific Snippets in Komodo 4.3 Beta

I recently made the switch from Zend Studio to Komodo as my IDE (Integrated Development Environment).

Now the reason for the switch wasn't because Active state, makers of Komodo, have a community site built on Drupal. But, it is nice to see that their developers and I have something in common.

While browsing the community site I stumbled upon a this forum thread discussing Drupal as the engine behind the community site. After I joined that conversation JeffG pointed out that Komodo 4.3 Beta actually has a couple of "snippets" in the default Komodo "toolbox" that are Drupal specific.

From the Komodo Help file:

Snippets are frequently used strings that can be quickly inserted into the current document. For example, repetitive sections of code or standard comments can be stored within a snippet. Snippets have advanced properties; they support the use of Tab Stops and Interpolation Shortcuts, can be assigned to Key Bindings, and allow for the specification of indentation context and cursor position.

February 24th 2008 4AM
By: andre
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Six reasons for Choosing Drupal

Its an exciting time in the world of Open Source CMS (Content/Community Management System). Today Drupal released version 6.0 of its award winning software. This release comes fast on the tails of last month's Joomla 1.5 release of their own popular CMS.

There has never been a better time to consider moving to an Open Source CMS solution. I can't speak to the specific strengths of Joomla or the other Open Source CMSs available, but if you are thinking of changing your web site management software or are just beginning your software search, consider the following about Drupal.

Drupal is Mature, Feature Rich, Secure, Supported, Widely Adopted and Free software.

Why should you care about these six strengths? Read on to find out.

February 13th 2008 7PM
By: andre
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How to create your own custom Drupalicon Munny

This is a tutorial for creating your very own Drupalicon Munny Toy.

In this tutorial, I will walk you through the steps I took to create the toy pictured on the left. I will cover the entire process, from idea, to getting a Munny, to preparation and execution.

This was a really fun project for me bringing together three of my passions and hobbies: Drupal, Art Toys and art. Not only that, but the project incorporated many new mediums I hadn't dabbled with or combined mediums in ways I hadn't tried before.

Nearly half the fun of the project was actually photographing the process along the way. I'm not a photographer, but I borrowed Danielle's Canon Digital 40D SLR and had fun playing with the bells and whistles.

So lets get started.

February 9th 2008 5PM
By: andre
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Drupalicomunny

DrupalicomunnyI forgot that drupal planet picks up flickr images tagged with Drupal. So, as I write this, I know that the Drupal planet has already seen pictures of my fun little toy project. The Drupalicomunny (Drupal icon in Munny form).

The project represents two of my worlds colliding: Art Toys and Drupal

By day I hack Drupal for fun and profit. In my spare time I can sometimes be found browsing my local toy stores or online toy galleries.

The design is obviously the physical manifestation of Drupalicon - the beloved mascot and icon of the Drupal open source community. The icon is actually drop of water (Drupal is derived from the Dutch word "druppel", which means "drop" as in a water droplet.) But, I have always seen an alien invader in that icon... So, I decided to put him in a space suit and let him invade the physical world.

I have many more photos documenting the project. I will be posting them in a 'how to' so you can make a Drupalicomunny of your own.
[edit - The tutorial is now online see How to create a Drupal Icon Munny]

February 9th 2008 5AM
By: andre
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Drupal Association Organization Member

Drupal Association Organization Member

Be Circle is a Organization Member of the Drupal Association. This should NOT be filed under 'tooting one's own horn'. This should be filed under 'bringing attention to the Drupal Association'.

The Drupal Association is the non-profit corporate manifestation of the Drupal community. The Association pays for hardware upgrades required by Drupal.org to run. They also provide financial and logistical support for Drupal conferences around the world. For complete details on what the Drupal Association is about see the site at http://assocation.drupal.org

December 31st 2007 12PM
By: andre
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Drupal's Greatest Asset

This month at the Toronto user's group meeting, Bob Fabian presented a talk on CIPS's (Canadian Information Processing Society) decision to convert their main site as well as 35+ regional sites to Drupal.

Neither Bob nor CIPS is a client of Be Circle, but the reason they choose Drupal was somewhat surprising. Upon reflection I think it is something I intuitively knew and couldn't help but write about it here.

So what lead to the decision? Why did CIPS choose Drupal? (I'll give you a clue: Its Drupal's greatest asset).

December 15th 2007 5AM
By: andre
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