Drupal 7 to 8 custom module conversion

started you guys are really my my own

team back there won't even let me start

ok manifest errs yeah we're rolling flex

running hey we're from manifest I'm

Benji this is Gordon we proposed this

session not really thinking we were

gonna get it

here we are so got a little agenda here

it's not on the screen yes ok so um I'm

gonna kind of give you a backstory of

what we did as far as converting these

modules in into blocks pages forms

JavaScript and then I'm sure there will

be questions so we'll try to answer them

to the best of our ability so basically

what we had to do was take a Drupal 7

site that was packing like six and

poured it to six drilling sites and we

were given three months to do it

the site didn't actually use domain or

anything that you would normally use to

make a single install look like six

sites they used taxonomy and a bunch of

crazy custom code and on top of that we

had two subdirectory sites which made

things interesting as well anything I

mean that you can say I could I could

actually comment forever on this yeah um

it was pretty hard to work with because

we inherited this and you would read

code and be like I don't even know why

this works or if it's working and yeah I

guess that's almost we spent as much

time being what I like to call

archaeologists is anything else you know

diving into someone else's code I'm sure

no one in here has ever had that

experience before so yeah it's not only

simply just taking something reporting

it to a new platform it's trying to

understand why and of course the team

that we had to work with on the other

end of the content entry people couldn't

tell us why some functionality existed

or not or whether it was needed in the

new site there was a lot of legacy

systems I know how much you guys know

about what best practice for like we

used to say I think it was 20 20 modules

platform we had any custom modules that

was on top of the contribs

that had everything under the Sun right

like no types were being including

organic groups and there was clearly no

organic groups in the site but we had it

but we didn't want to turn it off

because we wasn't we weren't really sure

right where else what where else that

would manifest itself so has anybody

done this yet ported from v7 to da

well yeah so this is just time to give

you guys an idea of what the file

structure looks like and these are both

the same model it's a this is a module

that pulls data from Google to create a

trending content block it shows the four

highest trending articles on the site

and as you can see they're slightly

different

well everything's kind of split out into

more farm sounds and we'll get into that

but first thing you want to do when

you're starting is wait for the screen

to refresh let's start with a dot info

file which you have to do in d7 d 8 d 6

if you've ever had to do that but in

becoming a mo file and which stands for

yet another markup language as I know

most of you already know and you still

need a dot module file but it

technically doesn't do anything I mean

you can put functions in it if you want

to but you don't have to so just to give

you an idea of what that dot info it

looks like it's pretty similar syntax is

important the spaces would you get the

spaces wrong you're basically looking at

a white screen site and you don't get

any good error message that really tells

you where it is what's happened what

is you kind of just have to walk through

the file until you figure it out and as

you can see pretty similar you have the

same things you don't let your files

anymore

it was screaming again I didn't even

change that time okay blocks Orton and I

were talking earlier and really the only

D seven hooks that we've ever used or

hook block info and hook block you does

anybody ever use the D the other ones

the same pre-suit pre-safe that's a

that's a thing

use the alter ones yeah

configure that's when you're doing

configurations forms and stuff like that

I don't know yeah yeah I mean I've seen

it I've just I've had to write it yeah

and as you can see on the on the right

side is what you're looking at in

you're polite and that lives in a

controller or plugin is that a plug-in

it's a plugin source to lug in black

yeah I kind of seen that right there

and these you got to declare the

namespace and it's usually Drupal your

module name plugin block and you need

these what are those you can call they

use puts the injection

okay dependency injection as you can

tell I'm really great at this stuff or

it just won't work as I found out and

then when you the annotation is

basically like your hook block info

where you give it an ID you the admin

label in that new category and then you

have a class that's basically the name

of your file and extends the block base

and then you have a build function with

an array inside it

so I hope you guys can see this on the

right or on the left I'm sorry is your

Drupal seven hook block info and then on

the right is what that looks like in

your plug-in so here again the

annotation the part of the comments is

the syntax is particular it's another

way

it's each item has to be on its own line

is then with a comma and if you don't do

that then it's you're not going to be

able to get it to appear like in this

particular instance this is how it shows

up in the block list when you go to we

go to place to block on a page so if

anybody has any questions just jump in

with them we don't have to wait till the

end and this is basically this is that

same module I was talking about that

creates the training block so this is

hook block view it's calling and

a custom callback for a custom function

that actually builds the block

um

and then in Drupal 8 inside your build

function it's basically doing the same

thing but in this case I decided to

actually render it with the View mode so

that we the original module just had a

template and it printed the values in

the template so things like that are a

lot easier in Tripoli as far as like

you know print getting things to the

page at least I think so

six one half dozen yeah I guess the

level of comfortability yeah I mean if

you don't like twig you do like twig

yeah I don't know I like it it's a lot

easier than I like it a lot but in the

PHP template yes

just me so pages in d7 you used book

menu and usually use the custom fallback

to get things to the page in d8 you have

a routing file that creates the path you

have a controller which is basically

your page if you want to add something

to a menu you also do that with the ammo

or if you want to add something to the

local task you do that with the ammo

file as well and Gordon's going to go

for the driver things I still don't

understand it

oh yeah it's got its own slide okay I'm

trying to thing in Indy seven in your

hook menu if you had say a collection of

items that were dynamic you wanted to

create local tasks a menu type of local

task the equivalent is you'd run a for

each statement and run through a list of

items to be able to dynamically create

these things on the menu in d8 use a

driver function in the ammo file you

specify the name of the driver and then

in here now this particular example it's

not really doing anything dynamic this

is just kind of illustrative but in here

same thing we have for each statement at

the bottom that would dynamically create

the items for the local tasks in the

particular site we were using we were

building this for this is actually

something that part of a module that

creates HTML emails that we just emailed

to the client so they can drop it into

their email system

yeah the content admins they go in they

create this is not exposed to outside

users this is simply for content admins

they come in they throw a bunch of

articles into a node so they're pulls in

teasers then they want to save it out

and purely grab the HTML and they throw

it into whatever their email is

MailChimp whatever it is it's already

rendered HTML so it's basically a tool

for them to be able to blast out emails

without us having to interact with the

system through their API this was kind

of business rules driven it's not how we

would have intended to build that tool

cetera which a lot of the things we did

so as I said before in your dot mounting

file

this is hook menu where you have the

items array and you get the page of

title usually have the custom call back

and in this case it's in a file and the

menu call that yeah menu callback is

simply it's a callback for a menu item

something on menu or line it's you're

specifying you're creating a path ok the

menu system knows that this path exists

you can't then go to the menu system and

create the same path it's blocking it

out throwing it into the DB so it can't

be used it's defining a static not know

so extent of it

instantiated callback semantics sorry

you're mapping a function to a path

let's put it that way so basically

that's what you're doing here with this

Jamo file you're giving the page a path

you're not if you wanted to do the menu

thing you would do that in the menu yamo

the menu link gamal but you're telling

it which controller to use and giving it

a title and

giving permissions right here in this

channel

so this is the return array from that

custom call back and Drupal 7 and as you

can see it's doing quite a few things

here it's attaching CSS JavaScript it's

doing some settings for the JavaScript

itself does anybody ever mess with that

I recently just learned how to do this I

didn't even know it was a thing until I

was working on a project and had to do

it so basically you can create things in

PHP that can be passed to your

JavaScript files so that's what this

States data thing is here

just in case that wasn't large enough

for you

then I skipped you did okay that's what

happened you swiped left so this is

basically the same thing in Drupal 8 it

hasn't changed too much the only thing

that really has changed is now and we'll

get into this later we are calling the

JavaScript and CSS and with a library as

you can see on the I mean the first

thing in the attached already

so forms we've all done them right

altered them I think I've used all of

these and Drupal 7 they really haven't

changed too much and Drupal 8

some of the function names are different

they of course are in their own file as

you can see that source form form name

and then the the form name extends the

form base class and then within that

class you usually hit all of these these

functions here and this is slightly

different this is still the router club

but for a forum you under the defaults

you actually have a path to your forum

and you usually want a permission that's

a little stronger than access content

because you don't really want everybody

touching your forms especially when they

will determine whether you're training

blocks work or not

so as you can this is Drupal 7

everybody's done forms

a race just like everything else is in

Drupal and if you look at the Drupal 8

version it really hasn't changed much at

all really there's maybe one line that's

different

and if you look

our next slide this is just kind of an

aside variables aren't a thing anymore

in Drupal 8 in Drupal 7 you would use

variable get and variable set to to get

and set your variables but as you can

see on the right side for Drupal 8 it's

changed a bit and they all now live

there's no more variable table either

they now live in config we think right

yeah they do we were just looking for it

earlier and we couldn't remember if they

actually lived in code or in the table

and we found it in a table so they're

kind of hard to find but they're there

so JavaScript's I didn't have to do much

type of script in Drupal 7 other than

get it to the page and it was actually

pretty easy there were several different

ways to do it you could just declare the

scripts in your info file you can do use

Drupal at j/s you could attach them an

array and you could use libraries that

has anybody ever done that in Drupal 7

I've never tried it

other than installing a lot of course

madhouse yeah because he's a nerdy and

socially awkward so in Drupal 8 they

pretty much you're using libraries

there's not really a choice and you can

either put them in your module file

there's a module Yambol or a theme yamo

in a theme you can actually add them to

your data info file but in a module you

need to attach them someway

so this is kind of what a library looks

like in Drupal 8 so you can in most

cases I think it throws things in the

footer now right

by default yes what's though if you need

it in the header you have to tell it hey

I need this in the header by just

putting header true there you can

include files that live in your module

or theme and you can set the pendants

ease for those you can also hit external

external scripts I didn't put an example

in here but I had to actually do one as

the value of a div and that was just

ugly so I didn't put it in here and I

don't want people doing that but

so yeah and that info this is pretty

much all you had to do whenever just

including in Drupal 7

but for

in a theme this is how you do it in

Drupal 8 so you just add libraries and

then point at the library that you've

named in the ammo file and when I was

doing this I noticed this I didn't

notice that when we were building the

site but you can actually remove CSS

files I'm guessing now it you put that

in there yeah it's pretty cool because

usually you had to then you have to

write something and pre-process HTML and

rip everything out of the scripts array

and then I thought you had to read

Eclair the same one but it was empty

yeah good times that seems

counterintuitive yeah

so this is basically the same a couple

ways you can add these

you can either use Drupal at jeaious or

in a return rate add them to the attach

to rate this was in d7 and as you see in

that Drupal at jazz example they

actually had different scripts for

different environments

not sure why

so this is basically this hasn't changed

much other than there's actually

there we go so basically are attaching

the libraries now instead of actual

files

whoops questions

philosopher got any questions again

enough time you can redo it we could do

let's go back to that did you remember

to set the record yeah so my favorite

thing here is the hook page attachments

bite when you're specifying libraries

libraries aren't just simply about like

in the past you had to put J s and CSS

on the page in two different commands

libraries you specify in a library you

can specify CSS and j s in the same

library and just get them both on the

page with one fell swoop that's what I

like about so much cleaner that way yeah

as a back-end guy I don't want to type

that much I mean the front-end guys

don't have to copy too much from Stack

Exchange we just like put on recording

that we sound like the two of the

laziest people in the world but we like

to think of it as efficient not lazy so

you get more done that's right

see we got through this presentation so

efficiently there's time for questions

what did you find that you had to review

in the interiors of the module not just

because they were allowed to encoded in

the first place but because of the

changes in Drupal now first up because

this is being recorded and the developer

may be in the room we didn't say it was

coded in a lousy way same the the

biggest problem we really had was

functionality and what was determined to

be needed or not needed and nobody when

there was a lot of lack of knowledge

well a lot of things we were able to do

with out with out-of-the-box things with

Drupal and then some of the things like

Gordon said lack of knowledge people

didn't know how things were actually

created so we're like two weeks out from

launch and we're finding pages that are

created in a module and using JavaScript

that we didn't know about and then you

know figuring out oh how do I get this

to the page this is how I used to do it

so like having to learn this or yeah

they're one of the modules like the CSS

was playing a really major part some

nothing was actually working because the

CSS was

if it was a map and it was coming in but

like about that big because it wasn't

reading any of the CSS rules that it

needed and I figured it out when I added

it to the library and all of a sudden

the maps like so there were things like

that the variable variables and

configuration like finding the right

syntax to do all that stuff that's the

thing with like Drupal 7 has really good

documentation because it's been around

forever and Drupal 8 not so much like

you would find one instance that got you

exactly what you needed

whereas what seven like you know you

google something and the whole first

page will give you ten different ways to

do something this site we inherited the

guy the original architect was actually

a very sharp programmer I don't think

that Drupal was his first love but the

reason there was 80 custom modules he

wanted all of the module creation or the

content type creation to live in code

and in version control so it wasn't in

the day you know he didn't go and create

an article content type and then put all

the fields on it and to get it in code

he had written custom written some

instantiation rules to be able to create

it when you enable that module it's got

a new content type and that content type

has all those fields and stuff like that

so all that stuff was what we like to

call cruft you know that because we went

to d8 we put all that stuff built it

through the UI or through the migrate

module and then we jumped it into the

ammo files we have to worry about it

again until we wanted to add a new field

to one of those content types so that

got rid of a lot of custom modules we

went from 80 down to like 10 I think

we're down to 10 right now and like he

said we got a lot of our functionality

out of controls that have come a long

way now we started talking to the client

about making this migration over a year

ago a year ago a lot of those modules

hadn't been ported the DA yet and that's

that was a significant help yeah that

the community was able to do that in the

year because if we had been on the hook

to do a lot of that stuff we would have

had to go on

the original route the original

developer went was to create a lot of

custom modules or we would have had to

get into all of those controls and work

on porting those and that's that's a

serious undertaking to that we weren't

staffed for we did have to write some

custom migrations

- yeah we did we had to convert filled

collections to paragraphs and so there

was a patch that existed to be able to

do some of it so we had to pass the

module and then we had to write some

custom migration scripts to be able to

get stuff out of field collections and

into the paragraph and that was kind of

a trial and error sort thing I think I'd

run that in quarters like a dozen times

so so having the ammo files got us out

of a lot of that overhead going from six

sites living on a single Drupal instance

to actually making them six discrete

sites in a multi-site environment opened

up the pipeline to the database from the

code base to the database was no longer

this big it was now you know this big

because each site was talking to its own

database we had a lot of speed increases

just like our SEO team was pretty happy

with the performance of the site because

that used to be a big problem you know

certain pages were taking 30 seconds to

load ridiculous stuff like that a lot of

the custom code too was just dealing

with the way they built them the

multi-site too

because there were you know entire files

that were looking at the URL and saying

if it's this URL do this so we we got

rid of a lot of that stuff - I think we

were talking about - before because two

of the sites exist as sub directory

sites Drupal in a subdirectory they were

sim linking to the parent directory so

if you did an inspection or tried to

load something in Drupal sighs it wasn't

that you know because it was when it was

trying to think about something it was

going through all the directories and

finding each instance of it because of

the siblings so yeah it was I was not

pleasant so that was at the top of the

list I think for goals for the project

in general we actually proposed this

originally as a as a case study more so

as how to port a module so these were a

lot of things that we were going to talk

about glad I had some time to get it in

there it was a learning experience yes

put it that way

obviously re-architecting isn't

something that you can automate but it

is any of this stuff that could go in

the scripting module conversion

scripting and things like that there's a

panels on the file that's a good

question I don't know if the way they

were built it would be possible cuz they

weren't really felt like I'm not I'm not

talking about doing your whole setup but

are there pieces that you've learned

that maybe could go into the scripting

so that other people wouldn't have as

much to do as possible I I don't think I

can answer that question on the spot

definitely use console to scaffold the

new modules you know just to take care

of something that without any some of it

for you

I'm just looking at getting more sites

to be able to go over to d8 and part of

it is converting modules and if you can

get somebody that likes to just run the

script and do a few things that they

know and get it set up so that other

people can come in and handle more the

detail that might hello yeah

and the example module has a lot of

stuff missed yeah like I said if you're

gonna re architect it because there's a

whole bunch of changes obviously that's

almost impossible automate is that's a

case-by-case basis yeah we shot other

things that like the variables right I

don't know how much that script does

that but yeah I don't know II think that

would be something that would be

because I usually pull them from the

example module and and in a lot of cases

we were trying to change it because we

didn't have to deal with six sites on

one because yeah because I feel like in

some cases the modules themselves got a

lot smaller two-digit I mean I'm sure no

one's had this problem where you know

you've been giving an insurmountable

task with extremely tight turnaround

time and this was not the case it was

there was there was plenty of times

where we were maybe following the

previous architecture out the window we

wanted to do it differently but you know

maybe to meet a particular deadline say

okay this is working for now let's not

reinvent the wheel we will address it

later because you know after the initial

launch of course there's going to be a

maintenance window you know for us to do

stuff because I mean right now so this

launched about a month ago we're out of

the woods with bug fixes we're doing

feature enhancements now and there's and

but a lot of these things the account

team now is really excited because well

speed increases doesn't like this

they've known they're not at a point

where they say hey go back to the line

and say there's a lot of these features

that we would like to implement which

were not a possibility before Indy 7

with the kind of load times we're

talking about or the overhead that the

site had so we're in a better place now

and that was kind of the first step on

the journey was to be able to do that

Oh young man ultimately from d78

how much of the fat was trimmed and he

said he brought down the number of

customers from 80 to 10

it was mostly to rear contect area yeah

well yeah because we had all these other

we were able to put a lot of stuff in

the ammo and I think we didn't talk

about this but the yam the conflicts

that we have for the site because

they're six or seven sites we have six

or seven config directories living and

that was a little bit of a problem in

during development we had so many

developers in there that we had a little

bit of aggression occasionally because

somebody was pulling in the wrong yam

will file or something like that but

yeah yeah you get to the point where

you're not going to each site and

exporting the config your gret exporting

at one time and you're copying and

pasting it in all these different

directories and then certain of those

things actually have the theme in them

and that was a lesson learned by some of

the devs that you know I just I just

caused the entire thing to not be able

to run config import because that theme

is not enabled on this particular site

so it's there's a there was some

learning lessons there too but to answer

your question I don't have a hard number

about how much fat was trimmed but if

you want to say like certain pages were

taking 20 to 30 seconds to load and

we're now down to like 2 2.5 seconds per

page and this is kind of a coffee-table

book version of sites they're like four

and five Meg's per page you know a lotta

imagery a lot of high-res imagery so we

feel like that's a huge win in terms of

performance

a lot of a lot of them we were able to

consolidate - they had probably four or

five modules that were just doing

JavaScript so I was able to put a bunch

of those in the same module and they had

a lot of analytics I mean there was

probably four different reporting's

going on yeah for each site I think we

got it down to two now is it two or

three there again there was a there was

a shortcoming in knowledge from the

different teams about what are we

actually still collecting on do we need

this yeah we had probably 20 30 scripts

that didn't need to be there yeah an 87

they were loading in the head you know

it's not like now we have them

predominantly a footer except for Google

Analytics always wants you to have and

the hats that are no longer on yeah

they'll come back down yeah that's been

a lot of time making this work

here's another 10 seconds

all right well I guess as we say that my

company like um we can give you back

twenty minutes of your day it's a

win-win thanks for coming