Drupal Code Builder

By joachim, Thu, 24/10/2024 - 11:25

Changing your mind about dependency injection

When I start writing a class that has a dependency injection, I have a clear idea about which services it needs. I generate it -- the plugin, form, controller, or service -- and specify those services.

Then nearly always, unless it's something really very simple, I find that no matter how much I thought about it and planned it, I need to add more services. Maybe remove some too.

Fortunately, because Module Builder saves the configuration of the module code you've generated, it's easy to go back to it and edit it to add more services:

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By joachim, Fri, 03/05/2024 - 20:47

Refactoring with Rector

Rector is a tool for making changes to PHP code, which powers tools that assist with upgrading deprecated code in Drupal. When I recently made some refactoring changes in Drupal Code Builder, which were too complex to do with search and replace regexes, it seemed like a good opportunity to experiment with Rector, and learn a bit more about it.

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By joachim, Sun, 09/09/2018 - 21:26

Drupal Code Builder: the analytical, adaptive code generator

It's now just over 10 years since webchick handed maintainership of the Module Builder project over to me. I can still remember nervously approaching her at the end of a day at DrupalCon 2008, outside the building where people were chatting, and asking her if she'd had time to look at the patches I'd posted for it. I was at my first DrupalCon; she'd just been named as the core co-maintainer for the work about to start on Drupal 7.

Making builder code look like output code

One of the big challenges with updating Drupal Code Builder for Drupal 8 has been the sheer variety of code to be output. On earlier versions of Drupal, it was just about hooks, and all that needed to be done was to take the API documentation code and replace 'hook_' with the module name. There were info files too, and Drupal 7 added the placing of hooks into different .inc files, but compared to this, Drupal 8 has things like plugin annotations, fluent method calls for content entity baseFieldDefinitions(), FormAPI arrays, not to mention PHP class methods, and more.

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By joachim, Wed, 21/02/2018 - 21:52

Regenerating plugin dependency injection with Module Builder

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.

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By joachim, Mon, 13/11/2017 - 21:49

Drupal Code Builder unit testing: bringing in the heavy stuff

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.

Brief update on Drupal Code Builder

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

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By joachim, Sun, 15/05/2016 - 13:13

What goes on in Drupal Code Builder?

Drupal Code Builder library is the new library which powers Module Builder. I recently split Module Builder up, so Drupal Code Builder (DCB) is the engine for generating Drupal code, while what remains in the Module Builder module is just the UI.

Module Builder announces split, due to functionality differences

For Drupal 8, Module Builder is undergoing some big changes. It still builds hooks, a README file, an api.php file, permissions, an admin settings form, but now also builds plugins, services, routing items, and its ability to scan your codebase to learn about hooks invented by any of your modules is now extended to plugin types too. And it's actually been available for Drupal 8 for quite some time, but up till now only as the Drush plugin version.

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Drupal Code Builder