Drupal 8 leverages a number of new libraries, including a slew from the Symfony 2 project. As stand-alone components, each one does an awesome job of making some part of building web applications easier. Taken together, they provide a solid, rational framework that Drupal 8 uses to manage complicated tasks like routing and dependency injection. Don't worry if that sounds overwhelming, we'll start simple so you can unwrap the onion layers and fully appreciate each component before we dive too deep.

Below are the next 5 videos in our Drupal 8 Developer prep series. We explore what Symfony is, and work our way into learning the first component we need when building an application with Symfony.

(FREE!) What Symfony is and the difference between a CMS and a framework - 2:41

If you’ve heard anything about Drupal 8, you’ve probably heard a bit about Symfony2. Symfony is a full-fledged framework that powers a lot of big sites out there (much like Drupal). Drupal incorporates several Symfony components, allowing us to leverage some mature code without re-inventing the wheel.

Building a simple example script and illustrating its flaws - 3:19

Throughout this section on Symfony, we’ll be using fairly simple example pages to demonstrate the advantages of refactoring to use various Symfony components. With this first ‘Hello, world’ script, we can identify several problems that are easily addressed by Symfony.

Refactoring our code, and how character encoding works - 5:21

In this video, we do our best to address the issues we identified with our initial script to get a sense of the direction we’d take.

How to incorporate the Http Foundation Symfony component to add object orientation to our simple script - 5:00

Now that we’ve seen how to tackle some of the problems with our initial script, we’re in a position to appreciate what the Http Foundation component has to offer. In this video, we rebuild our script using the Request and Response classes which come with the component.

How the Request and Response classes work - 3:18

Having seen Request and Response, we dive into the paradigm of thinking about our page in terms of the two part process of a client request-ing something from the server, and then respond-ing with something the client expects.

(FREE!) How Composer and Packagist work together to help manage reusable PHP components - 1:39

The evolution of Composer and Packagist as a way to centralize the download and management of PHP libraries for any project is a huge boon. With a single file, you can set up which libraries you want to download and which versions you will be using. In this video we explain exactly why it's so useful.

How to install Composer on a Mac or Linux and what a .phar file is - 3:13

Before we use Composer, we need to install it. Here we walk through the process for Mac and Linux users and briefly explain what a Phar file is (hint: It's like a Zip file that can contain an entire PHP application)

How to install Composer in Windows - 1:23

In this video, we walk through installing Composer on a Windows machine.

How to set up our Composer example folder and set up a basic Composer project - 2:21

Now that we have Composer, we have thousands of vetted PHP libraries at our fingertips. Mwaaahahaha! Before we go too crazy, we're going to set up a simple application that includes a single package from the popular Doctrine library that Drupal 8 leverages as well.

How JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) and our composer.json file work - 1:31

JSON has become a useful standard for structuring arrays of data in a portable way. In this video we explain the basic structure of a .json file and the specific structure of a composer.json file.

Right now we're working on some BuildAModule infrastructure improvements to make it easier to release new features and updates to the site. While we're hard away at work, we wanted to give you some incentive to participate in some Drupal contributing.

So, over the next week, for every patch you submit to a Drupal module, theme, or core, we will enter your name into a drawing to win a FULL YEAR of BuildAModule for the person of your choosing. Just send us an email with the link to the patch submissions, and we'll enter your name in. If you're new to patching, check out the Drupal.org documentation here, and a bit on BuildAModule about how to apply patches once they're created.

Good luck!

The new BuildAModule has a ton of new features and nearly every facet of the site has been improved in some way, shape, or form. While it's impossible to list each and every change here, we wanted to highlight some of the ones that we're the most excited about.

Watching videos is what our users do most, so it was important for us to have some major video player upgrades. Users on Android and iOS phones and tablets will immediately notice that we've gone to great lengths to provide a better mobile experience. And we've added a number of tools to the new video options menu, including the ability to hide the transcript and share a link to any point in a video.

If you've been using the site for awhile now, one of the most obvious change is the new homepage. We've highlighted how different users use BuildAModule to achieve their training goals, made it easier to find the newest and most popular videos, and added a handy new membership calculator to help you figure out the savings you can get from subscribing to longer-term and group memberships.

Instead of displaying all 1100+ videos on a single page, we've now split them up into individual collection pages to make it easier to browse through and digest our library. Each one includes a list of prerequisites, a description of who the collection is for, and a summary of what's covered, which makes it much simpler to determine which collections are right for you.

If you liked having all the videos on one page because it was easy to use your browser's search to find what you needed, then you'll love our new search overlay. You get the same kind of functionality with the added ability to search through transcripts as well. And since the overlay plays the videos from your results in-line, you can search freely without the fear of losing your place on the site.

We have an amazing activity monitor that visualizes your activity over the last 30 days and helps track your progression on the site. If you're the manager of a group account, you can look at the activity pages for each of your users to figure out what they've been working on. With these tools, you can get a sense of your overall progress at a glance and make sure you're getting the most out of your membership.

Another big feature that we've added is the playlist manager. You can now save playlists to your account and create landing pages for them. We've done everything that we can to make it quick and easy to create and share playlists that will help solve training problems for you and your organization.

There are hundreds of other improvements to the new site, and we'd like to invite you to take a look around and discover these new features for yourself. We hope you enjoy all of these new additions as much as we enjoyed working on them.
 

Take the tour

The Drupal 8 Developer Prep series picks up again with a look at some PHP coding standards. We'll continue to work with our Autoloader and explain why it's to our advantage to make sure it complies to the PHP Standards Recommendations (PSR) set out by the Framework Interoperability Group (FIG).

4 NEW videos added in "Drupal 8 Developer Prep"

(FREE!) What FIG (Framework Interoperability Group) is and why PSR-0 (PHP Standards Recommendation) exists - 1:32

Autoloading becomes much more powerful if all of the libraries you use expect the autoloader to work in the same way. To solve problems like creating standards around autoloading, the Framework Interoperability group was created, and the first recommendation they put out was to solve this particular problem.

How to build a PSR-0 compliant autoloader, and a walkthrough of PSR-0 requirements - 8:43

PSR-0 has a cryptic sounding name, and the fact that it took a bunch of really smart people coming together to create it might imply that it should be dauntingly complicated, but it's not. In this video, we walk through each of the conditions and build an autoloader that fits the bill.

Why it's good to use an established autoloader instead of creating your own - 1:24

Even though the basics of autoloading are simple and we can build one on our own, there's some serious gains to be made by using a more mature autoloading solution. We talk about that a bit in this video.

How to make our own project PSR-0 compatible - 4:44

To wrap up our OOP boot camp, we're going to take our own components and make them far more useful by conforming them to PSR-0 standards. What we end up with is going to look a lot like the code we built in our first Drupal 8 module example, but this time the structure is going to make a lot more sense.

The Drupal 8 Developer Prep series keeps on trucking with a more in-depth look at Autoloading. This week, we're going to create a simple Autoloader and walk you through each line of code as it executes! We'll also take a quick look at a more likely third party scenario in order to get a better idea of what the structure of a typical third party PHP library is like.

3 NEW videos added in "Drupal 8 Developer Prep"

(FREE!) How to create a simple autoloader - 2:24

Now that you know what an autoloader is, we look at how to create a simple autoloader. We'll build on this in videos coming up, but this should give you a clear sense of how it works and dispel what seems like magic when you haven't looked under the autoloading hood.

Walking through our simple autoloader with a debugger - 2:02

Just to drive home how our autoloader works, we step through the code line by line as it executes to see exactly what's going on.

How a typical PHP library will be structured and what each of the nested folders mean - 3:12

One of the most obvious changes introduced while building a module in Drupal 8 is the incredible nest of directories in which we need to work. Each directory has a purpose, and many of them are tied in with the autoloading conventions being used. In this video we walk through each level and explain what's going on.

Cyber Monday Deal Extended! 30% OFF ANYTHING!!

If you missed out on our Cyber Monday deal yesterday, then you're in luck. We're extending the savings for another 24 hours so that our Newsletter subscribers can get in on the action. Get 30% off anything at BuildAModule by using the code CYBER2013 when checking out!

A New Chapter Begins! An Introduction to Namespacing...

Today marks the start of a new chapter in our Drupal 8 Developer Prep series. We're going to be doing a bit of work with Namespacing over the coming weeks. To start things off, we'll show you how it can be used to avoid some major headaches when you're working on a project with naming conflicts.

5 NEW videos added in "Drupal 8 Developer Prep"

How to split a single large file into individual class files - 4:43

So far we've been building our entire project in a single file to make it easy to review. For sustainability and re-usability, though, eventually every mega-file needs to be split up into separate components. In this video we talk about the specifics of splitting things up.

How to name class files - 1:03

There's a lot of freedom in how you can name classes and class files, but by following a couple simple conventions, you'll pave the way for easier integration with other components later on.

How using third-party libraries or working on a team can create naming conflicts - 3:03

Have you ever spent a bunch of energy building an important component to your project, only to realize later that there's a more mature third-party library that will fit the bill? And then, when you try to use it, you realize that it uses the same class name as your component? Even if your answer is no, it's something you'll run into eventually, and it's good to have a solution at the ready.

(FREE!) How to use namespaces in PHP - 7:11

In this video we walk through the mechanics of namespacing, including how we reference namespaced classes and use other namespaces. The basics seem simple, but if wrapping your mind around namespaces has ever set your head swimming, the tangible examples in this video should help clear things up.

How to use namespaces to avoid naming conflicts - 2:34

How to use namespaces to avoid naming conflicts">

After looking at the implementation of namespacing in the previous video, we look at how it makes using including our third-party class along with our identically-named self-made class possible without altering any names or adding gobs of unearthly prefixes.