Lesson 03: NodeAPI

Our third lesson debuts the new (and hopefully steady) time for trainings; Sundays at 11am PST. This lesson should also be good in terms of increased audio quality.

Join us in #drupal-dojo on IRC, and on Skype. VNC screensharing will be at Webavant's VNC Viewer.

Pre-prep documentation and reading material:
NodeAPI Spec
PasteBin Example Code

Lesson 01: Drupal Basics, FormAPI, and CCK

After some discussion in IRC, it seems that there's definitely interest in having "lessons" here at the Dojo. Ideas range from HowTo on specific features or topics to having creators of interesting sites lead the group in an under-the-hood tour. Really, the sky is the limit.

It is with this intention that we will try and make lesson-time be a recurring weekly feature. To that end Josh will run the first few sessions. Hopefully within a couple weeks we will have a format that works and other experts can step in/step up.

For the first lesson, we will try to cover the basics: drupal terminology and what it means, the basic module hooks, good coding style and best practices.

Since this is of high value to all dojo members -- and it's a lesson that should be repeated many times as new developers join -- we're also going to try and create good documentation out of this. A primer for new Drupal coders, so to speak.

Hook_form_alter breakdown

Dmitri walks us through some sample form_alters. If you want to customize how your forms look and feel, this is a good start.

Edit: Thanks to Dipen for transcribing the lesson!

Hook_perm walkthrough

Dmitri gives us an insight into how hook_perm works - it's easier than you think, and a vital part of permissions control.

Thanks again to Dipen for the lesson notes!