2014 greatest hits - 30 Awesome Drupal 8 API Functions you Should Already Know - Fredric Mitchell

Looking back on 2014, it was a great year of events and conversations with people in and around Acquia, open source, government, and business. I think I could happily repost at least 75% of the podcasts I published in 2014 as "greatest hits," but then we'd never get on to all the cool stuff I have been up to so far in 2015!

Nonetheless, here's one of my favorite recordings from 2014: a terrific session that will help you wrap your head around developing for Drupal 8 and a great conversation with Frederic Mitchell that covered the use of Drupal and open source in government, government decision-making versus corporate decision-making, designing Drupal 7 sites with Drupal 8 in mind, designing sites for the end users and where the maximum business value comes from in your organization, and more!

---Original post from October, 2014---

Drupal in Government

"We were part of the original Whitehouse.gov [Drupal] build, and the We the People petition system that they use for the democratization of ideas. I feel it opened up this conversation about what open source was, the security of open source, and what it really meant in terms of democratic principles. Of course, in the land of politics, perception is important."

"I was the lead developer at one point on the Energy.gov project; that was one of the first Drupal 7 sites. That checked all of the political checkboxes:

1. it was going to save money
2. it brought various offices under the Department of Energy under the same branding
3. they didn't have the recurring licenses
4. and because it is open source, because we can manipulate it, we can custom tailor those content authoring experiences and those tools to the needs of the various offices while still having that kind of super administrator and allowing that person to control what needed to be controlled.""

"Being able to enable government officials to get their message ... It's a public service ... We're continuing to work with the Senate, with the House of Representatives; it's been absolutely great because everyone understands at this point in 2014, that open, transparency, open source, democratization – they all have a single, underlying thread."

Presenter Dossier: Fredric Mitchell

• Senior Engineer, Phase 2
• Drupal.org profile: fmitchell
• Website: http://brightplum.com/
• Twitter: fredricmitchell
• 1st Drupal memory: Meeting Drupal while working with Larry Garfield at Palantir ... "My first Drupal memory was trying to absorb all of Larry's eagerness and enthusiasm about Drupal 5."

Session Description

Now that you know how to build sites, it's time to take the next step and jump into the Drupal 8 API. This session reviews the 30 API functions that you should know to begin your journey.

This is an updated version of my popular talk at Drupalcamp Chicago and Drupalcamp Costa Rica that now covers Drupal 8!

We'll jump through common API examples with some derived examples from the excellent Examples module and others that will carry over from Drupal 7.

Attendees will learn the behind-the-scenes functions that power common UI elements with the idea of being able to build or customize them for your projects. Some of these include:

• drupal_render()
• entity_load_multiple() (node_load_multiple in D7)
• entity_view_multiple()
• menu_get_tree()
• taxonomy_get_tree()
• Field::fieldInfo()->getField() (field_info_field in D7)
• QueryBase class (EntityFieldQuery in D7)
• Request->attributes->get(‘entity’) (menu_get_object in D7)

Session Video

Session slides

You can grab a copy of Fredric's slides he updated for DrupalCon Austin from his GitHub repository.

Interview video