A visual and technical deep dive

What is a Plugin?

Heliors' definition: A discreet class that executes an operation withing the context of a given scope, as a means to extend Drupal’s functionality

Kris' definition: A discoverable class that implements a particular interface which adds or extends a pluggable subsystem

  • Discoverable
  • Object Oriented
  • Interface Driven
  • Swappable
  • Drupal not required

Why Plugins

Drupal actually is kinda unique

  • Unprecedented configurability
  • Abscence of similar code
  • Other CMS don’t expose as much
  • Frameworks expect it to be hardcoded

Benefits of Plugins

  • Definition & implementation are co-located
    • Instead of looking at an implemention of a hook (e.g. module_menu) and looking at hook_menu in another file
    • Implementation in class code, definition in annotation
  • Plugins are object oriented
    • No need to know names of all related hooks (e.g. hook_block_view, hook_block_info)
    • Implements a standard interface
  • Plugins are extensible
    • Inherit from base class
    • Inherit from other plugins
  • Plugins are lazy loaded by default
  • Common pattern (learn once, use everywhere)

Foundational Concepts

  • Autoloading
    • PSR-0 - \Drupal\Core => "core/lib/Drupal/Core" \Drupal\Component => "core/lib/Drupal/Component"
    • PSR-4 - \Drupal\Block => "core/modules/block/src"
  • Dependency Injection
  • Service Containers
  • Annotations
    • Config in code comments

Annotations

  • Annotations are not code!
  • yaml, json, {insert_serializer} are not code!
  • Annotations have more in common with serialization
  • Data not behaviour