drupal

Drupal 7 - A Rails-like approach for Drupal form and module development

Looking for a Ruby on Rails like approach for Drupal 7 form and module development? If so, I may have just the tool you're looking for.

As you can see in the video below, I show how I can generate Add, Edit, Delete, and List forms for a Drupal 7 project I'm working on in four minutes, or one minute per form. Of course there's a little more work to be done, but the code-generating approach I've taken is exactly what Ruby on Rails and CakePHP did the last time I used them.

By Alvin Alexander on August 18, 2011

Drupal form default input focus

Drupal form FAQ: How do I get default input focus on a Drupal form field (presumably a form textfield)?

There may be a better way to do this, but here's what I just did to get default input focus on a series of Drupal form 'add' and 'edit' pages. I just included the following Drupal form suffix definition on any form where I wanted to control the default input focus:

By Alvin Alexander on March 4, 2013

Handling Drupal SQL exceptions (db_insert, db_update, db_delete)

While developing a Drupal module, I just ran into a situation where it may be common for users to generate SQL exceptions. I have a 'unique' limit on several of my database tables, essentially saying that certain name fields must be unique for the current project. As you can imagine, it's extremely easy to enter a duplicate name, and while doing a SQL INSERT that can easily lead to a SQL exception.

As a result, I dug around and found a way to handle SQL exceptions in Drupal queries. My current problem is with a Drupal 7 db_insert query, and I handled it like this:

By Alvin Alexander on August 14, 2011

A Drupal 7 SQL cheat sheet

I'm currently developing a new Drupal 7 application (technically built as a new Drupal module), and as I'm building the application, I've made notes on database queries I've made.

The approach I'm taking is to use the following Drupal SQL query functions. As you can see from the function names, there are now different Drupal functions for each query type:

By Alvin Alexander on August 12, 2011

25+ Drupal form and module programming examples

This page serves as an index to all of my Drupal module, form, and databases tutorials and examples. In an effort to help supplement the documentation on the Drupal.org website, over time I hope to have good examples for every Drupal module and form problem you'll run into.

By Alvin Alexander on August 8, 2011

A Drupal 7 table with sortable headers and pager

In my previous blog post I wrote about how to create an HTML table in a Drupal 7 module form. As promised in that tutorial, once I figured out how to make the table columns sortable, I'd share that secret recipe as well. Here then is how to make an HTML table in a Drupal 7 module/form:

By Alvin Alexander on August 8, 2011

A Drupal 7 form table example

If you're interested in building an HTML table with Drupal, Drupal 7 in this case, here's a quick example of how this can be done.

My Drupal "theme table" approach currently provides the following functionality:

By Alvin Alexander on December 17, 2011

A Drupal form select/options field example (dropdown box)

Drupal form FAQ: How do I create an HTML SELECT/OPTIONS field in a Drupal form?

Solution: If you'd like to create an HTML SELECT field (a dropdown box) in a Drupal form that looks something like this:

A Drupal 7 form SELECT OPTIONS field example

there are at least two ways to do so.

By Alvin Alexander on August 7, 2011

A Drupal 7 db_insert query (SQL INSERT statement)

Drupal 7 database FAQ: How do I use the Drupal dbquery function to perform a SQL INSERT? (Or, what is the Drupal 7 dbinsert syntax?)

I didn't type db_query in that question by mistake. I just spent 45 minutes trying to use it for a Drupal 7 SQL INSERT, which of course I've now learned doesn't work.

In short, if you're looking for a Drupal 7 db_insert example that shows how to perform a SQL INSERT, and also happens to show some SQL Timestamp fields, here's a 'submit' function I'm currently writing:

By Alvin Alexander on August 7, 2011

A Drupal get user id function (uid)

Just a quick note here to share a Drupal get user id (uid) function. I've found that when I'm developing a Drupal module or Drupal application, I often need to access the user id, so I created this simple function and include it in a common utilities module:

# return the current drupal user id (uid)
function get_user_id() {
  global $user;
  return $user->uid;
}

As you can see, the code accesses the global Drupal user object ($user), then gets the uid from the user object.

By Alvin Alexander on August 3, 2011

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