Regenerating plugin dependency injection with Module Builder

Submitted by joachim on Wed, 2018/02/21 - 21:52

Dependency injection is a pattern that adds a lot of boilerplate code, but Drupal Code Builder makes it easy to add injected services to plugins, forms, and service classes.

Now that the Drupal 8 version of Module Builder (the Drupal front-end to the Drupal Code Builder library) uses an autocomplete for service names in the edit form, adding injected services is even easier, and any of the hundreds of services in your site’s codebase (443 on my local sandbox Drupal 8 site!) can be injected.

I often used this when I want to add a service to an existing plugin: re-generate the code, and copy-paste the new code I need.

This is an area in which Module Builder now outshines its Drush counterpart, because unlike the Drush front end for Drupal Code Builder, which generates code with input parameters every time, Module Builder lets you save your settings for the generated module (as a config entity).

So you can return to the plugin you generated to start with, add an extra service to it, and generate the code again. You can copy and paste, or have Module Builder write the file and then use git to revert custom code it’s removed. (The ability to insert generated code into existing files is on my list of desirable features, but is realistically a long way off, as it would be rather complex, a require the addition of a code parsing library.)

But why stop at generating code for your own modules? I recently filed an issue on Search API, suggesting that its plugins could do with tweaking to follow the standard core pattern of a static factory method and constructor, rather than rely on setters for injection. It’s not a complex change, but a lot of code churn. Then it occurred to me: Drupal Code Builder can generate that boilerplate code: simply create a module in Module Builder called ‘search_api’, and then add a plugin with the name of one that is already in Search API, and then set its injected services to the services the real plugin needs.

Drupal Code Builder already knows how to build a Search API plugin: its code analysis detects the right plugin base class and annotation to use, and also any parameters that the constructor method should pass up to the base class.

So it’s pretty quick to copy the plugin name and service names from Search API’s plugin class to the form in Module Builder, and then save and generate the code, and then copy the generated factory methods back to Search API to make a patch.

I’m now rather glad I decided to use config entities for generated entities. Originally, I did that just because it was a quick and convenient way to get storage for serialized data (and since then I discovered in other work that map fields are broken in D8 so I’m very glad I didn’t try to make then content entities!). But the ability to save the generating settings for a module, and then return to it to add to them has proved very useful.

Tags: 
drupal code builder
module builder

Triggering events on the fly

Submitted by joachim on Fri, 2018/01/12 - 21:45

As far as I know, there's nothing (yet) for triggering an arbitrary event. The complication is that every event uses a unique event class, whose constructor requires specific things passing, such as entities pertaining to the event.

Today I wanted to test the emails that Commerce sends when an order completes, and to avoid having to keep buying a product and sending it through checkout, I figured I'd mock the event object with Prophecy, mocking the methods that the OrderReceiptSubscriber calls (this is the class that does the sending of the order emails). Prophecy is a unit testing tool, but its objects can be created outside of PHPUnit quite easily.

Here's my quick code:

  $order = entity_load('commerce_order', ORDER_ID);

  $prophet = new \Prophecy\Prophet;
  $event = $prophet->prophesize('Drupal\state_machine\Event\WorkflowTransitionEvent');

  $event->getEntity()->willReturn($order);

  $subscriber = \Drupal::service('commerce_order.order_receipt_subscriber');

  $subscriber->sendOrderReceipt($event->reveal());

Could some sort of generic tool be created for triggering any event in Drupal? Perhaps. We could use reflection to detect the methods on the event class, but at some point we need some real data for the event listeners to do something with. Here, I needed to load a specific order entity and to know which method on the event class returns it. For another event, I'd need some completely different entities and different methods.

We could maybe detect the type that the event method return (by sniffing in the docblock... once we go full PHP 7, we could use reflection on the return type), and the present an admin UI that shows a form element for each method, allowing you to enter an entity ID or a scalar value.

Still, you'd need to look at the code you want to run, the event listener, to know which of those you'd actually want to fill in.

Would it same more time than cobbling together code like the above? Only if you multiply it by a sufficiently large number of developers, as is the case with many developer tools.

It's the sort of idea I might have tinkered with back in the days when I had time. As it is, I'm just going to throw this idea out in the open.

Tags: 
events
developer tools

Drupal Code Builder unit testing: bringing in the heavy stuff

Submitted by joachim on Mon, 2017/11/13 - 21:49

I started adding unit tests to Drupal Code Builder about 3 years ago, and I’ve been gradually expanding on them ever since. It’s made refactoring the code a pleasant rather than stressful experience.

However, while all generator types are covered, the level of detail the tests go into isn’t that deep. Back when I wrote the tests, they mostly needed to check for hook implementations that were generated, and so quick and dirty regexes on the generated code did the job: match 'mymodule_form_alter' in the generated code, basically. I gradually extended those to cover things like class declarations and methods, but that approach is very much cracking at the seams.

So it’s time to switch to something more powerful, and more suited to the task.

I’ve already removed my frankly hideous attempt at verifying that generated code is correctly-formed PHP, replacing it with a call to PHP’s own code linter. My own code was running the generated PHP code files through eval() (yes, I know!) to check nothing crashed, which was quick and worked but only up to a point: tests couldn’t create the same function twice, as eval()ing code that contains a function declaration brings it into the global namespace, and it didn’t work at all for classes where while tests were being run, as the parent classes in Drupal core or contrib aren't present.

It's already proved worthwhile, as once I'd converted the tests, I found an error in the generated code: a stray quote mark in base field definitions for a content entity, which my approach wasn't picking up, and never would have.

The second phase is going to be to use PHPCS and Drupal Coder to check that generated code follows Drupal Coding Standards. I'm currently getting that to work in my testing base class, although it might be a while before I push it, as I suspect it's going to complain about quite a few nipicks in the generated code that I'll then have to spend some time fixing.

The third phase (this is a 3-phrase programme, all the best ones are) is going to be to look into using PHP-Parser to check for the presence of functions and methods in the code, rather than my regex-based approach. This is going to allow for much more thorough checking of the generated code, with things such as method order in the code, service injection, and more.

After that, it'll be back to some more refactoring and code clean-up, and then some more code generators! I have a few ideas of what else Drupal Code Builder could generate, but more ideas are welcome in the issue queue on github.

Tags: 
drupal code builder

Brief update on Drupal Code Builder

Submitted by joachim on Fri, 2017/09/15 - 21:31

I've completely revamped the Drush commands for Drupal Code Builder:

  • First, they're now in their own project on Github
  • Second, I've rewritten them completely for Drush 9, completely interactive.
  • Third, they are now geared towards adding to existing modules, rather than generating a module as a single shot. That approach made sense in the days of Drupal 6 when it was just hook implementations, but I increasingly find I want to add a plugin, a service, a form, to a module I've already started.

The downside is that installing these is rather tricky at the moment due to some current limitations in Drush 9 beta; see details in the project README, which has full instructions for workarounds.

Now that's out of the way, I'm pushing on with some new generators for the Drupal Code Builder library itself. On my list is:

  • plugin types (as in the plugin manager service, base class and interface, and declaration for Plugins module)
  • entity type
  • entity type handlers
  • your suggestions in the issue queue...

And of course more unit tests and refactoring of the codebase.

Dorgflow: a tool to automate your drupal.org patch workflow

Submitted by joachim on Wed, 2017/02/22 - 23:14

I’ve written previously about git workflow for working on drupal.org patches, and about how we don’t necessarily need to move to a github-style system on drupal.org, we just maybe need better tools for our existing workflow. It’s true that much of it is repetitive, but then repetitive tasks are ripe for automation. In the two years since I released Dorgpatch, a shell script that handles the making of patches for drupal.org issues, I’ve been thinking of how much more of the drupal.org patch workflow could be automated.

Now, I have released a new script, Dorgflow, and the answer is just about everything. The only thing that Dorgflow doesn’t automate is uploading the patch to drupal.org (and that’s because drupal.org’s REST API is read-only). Oh, and writing the code to actually fix bugs or create new features. You still have to do that yourself, along with your cup of coffee.

So assuming you’ve made your own hot beverage of choice, how does Dorgflow work?

Simply! To start with, you need to have an up to date git clone of the project you want to work on, be it Drupal core or a contrib project.

To start work on an issue, just do:

$ dorgflow https://www.drupal.org/node/123456

You can copy and paste the URL from your browser. It doesn’t matter if it has an anchor link on the end, so if you followed a link from your issue tracker and it has ‘#new’ at the end, or clicked down to a comment and it has ‘#comment-1234’ that’s all fine.

The first thing this comment does it make a new git branch for you, using the issue number and the name. It then also downloads and applies all the patch files from the issue node, and makes a commit for each one. Your local git now shows you the history of the work on the issue. (Note though that if a patch no longer applies against the main branch, then it’s skipped, and if a patch has been set to not be displayed on the issue’s file list, then it’s skipped too.)

Let’s see how this works with an actual issue. Today I wanted to review the patch on an issue for Token module. The issue URL is https://www.drupal.org/node/2782605. So I did:

$ dorgflow https://www.drupal.org/node/2782605

That got me a git history like this:

  * 6d07524 (2782605-Move-list-of-available-tokens-from-Help-to-Reports) Patch from Drupal.org. Comment: 35; URL: https://www.drupal.org/node/2782605#comment-11934790; file: token-move-list-of-available-tokens-2782605-34.patch; fid 5784728. Automatic commit by dorgflow.
 * 6f8f6e0 Patch from Drupal.org. Comment: 15; URL: https://www.drupal.org/node/2782605#comment-11666939; file: 2782605-13.patch; fid 5710235. Automatic commit by dorgflow.
 /
* a3b68cc (8.x-1.x) Issue #2833328 by Berdir: Handle bubbleable metadata for block title token replacements
* [older commits…]

What we can see here is:

  • Git is now on a feature branch, called ‘2782605-Move-list-of-available-tokens-from-Help-to-Reports’. The first part is the issue number, and the rest is from the title of the issue node on drupal.org.
  • Two patches were found on the issue, and a commit was made for each one. Each patch’s commit message gives the comment index where the patch was posted, the URL to the comment, the patch filename, and the patch file entity ID (these last two are less interesting, but are used by Dorgflow when you update a feature branch with newer patches from an issue).

The commit for patch 35 will obviously only show the difference between it and patch 15, an interdiff effectively. To see what the patch actually contains, take a diff from the master branch, 8.x-1.x.

(As an aside, the trick to applying a patch that’s against 8.x-1.x to a feature branch that already has commit for a patch is that there is a way to check out files from any git commit while still keeping git’s HEAD on the current branch. So the patch applies, because the files look like 8.x-1.x, but when you make a commit, you’re on the feature branch. Details are on this Stack Overflow question.)

At this point, the feature branch is ready for work. You can make as many commits as you want. (You can rename the branch if you like, provided the ‘2782605-’ part stays at the beginning.) To make your own patch with your work, just run the Dorgflow script without any argument:

$ dorgflow

The script detects the current branch, and from that, the issue number, and then fetches the issue node from drupal.org to get the number of the next comment to use in the patch filename. All you now have to do is upload the patch, and post a comment explaining your changes.

Alternatively, if you’re a maintainer for the project, and the latest patch is ready to be committed, you can do the following to put git into a state where the patch is applied to the main development branch:

$ dorgflow commit

At that point, you just need to obtain the git commit command from the issue node. (Remember the drupal standard git message format, and to check the attribution for the work on the issue is correct!)

What if you’ve previously reviewed a patch, and now there’s a new one? Dorgflow can download new patches with this command:

$ dorgflow update

This compares your feature branch to the issue node’s patches, and any patches you don’t yet have get new commits.

If you’ve made commits for your own work as well, then effectively there’s a fork in play, as your development in your commits and the other person’s patch are divergent lines of development. Appropriately, Dorgflow creates a separate branch. Your commits are moved onto this branch, while the feature branch is rewound to the last patch that was already there, and then has the new patches applied to it, so that it now reflects work on the issue. It’s then up to you to do a git merge of these two branches in order to combine the two lines of development back into one.

Dorgflow is still being developed. There are a few ideas for further features in the issue queue on github (not to mention a couple of bugs for some of the various possible cases the update command can encounter). I’m also pondering whether it’s worth the effort to convert the script to use Symfony Console; feel free to chime in with any opinions on the issue for that.

There are tests too, as it’s pretty important that a script that does things to your git repository does what it’s supposed to (though the only command that does anything destructive is ‘dorgflow cleanup’, which of course asks for confirmation). Having now written this, I’m obviously embarking upon cleaning it up and to some extent rewriting it, though I do have the excuse that the early weeks of working on this were the days after the late nights awake with my newborn daughter, and so the early versions of the code were written in a haze of sleep deprivation. If you’d like to submit a pull request, please do check in with me first on an issue to ensure it’s not going to clash with something I’m partway through changing.

Finally, if you find this as useful as I do (this was definitely an itch I’ve been wanting to scratch for a long time, as well as being a prime case of condiment-passing), please tell other Drupal developers about it. Let’s all spend less time downloading, applying, and rolling patches, and more time writing Drupal code!

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