DrupalEasy Podcast 49: Drupal 7 Theming with John Albin Wilkins

Drupal 7 Module Development book coverJohn Albin Wilkins (JohnAlbin on Drupal.org), co-author of Packt Publishing's new Drupal 7 Module Development as well as one of the main contributors of Drupal 7's theme layer, joined Ryan Price and Mike Anello to talk about theming in Drupal 7.

The discussion provides a nice overview of theming in Drupal 7 as well as what new features themers can expect when they dive in. Topics covered include the new "render elements" and hook_page_alter(). John also explained what themers can expect when upgrading a theme from Drupal 6 to Drupal 7 as well as how enjoyable he finds working in Drupal 7.

"Drupal 7 Module Development" was written by six current and past Palintir.net employees, all very involved in core Drupal development (including past DrupalEasy podcast participants Matt Butcher and Larry Garfield). John worked mainly on the two theming chapters - both of them extremely impressive in their scope and depth. The chapter on module theming is especially comprehensive, covering everything from theme functions to the theme registry. Other chapters cover Drupal permissions, JavaScript, installation profiles, and even an appendix on the new database layer. Overall, it appears to be a very strong Drupal book. We received a copy of the book just hours before the interview, so while aren't able to provide a complete review, it was really impressive during our initial time with it.

In addition to all of his work on Drupal 7, John is also the maintainer of the Zen theme and is working towards an official Drupal 7 release for it. He has proposed a session for DrupalCon Chicago: Become an IA superstar: building essential navigation in Drupal - be sure to give it some fivestar-love if you'd like to see it.

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Comments

@liberatr: I've been trying to learn a little module development, but always thought I would need to learn PHP first. Is this true or does it help to just have a general understanding?

I'm curious about your statement during this podcast were you said,(I'm paraphrasing so correct me if I misinterpreted what you meant) "I am a Drupal developer, I use the API I don't use PHP"

@bhosmer

Submitted by Guest (not verified) on Fri, 02/04/2011 - 18:38

Ben,

You need to know the basics of computer programming, to be sure, and PHP syntax. This is not to say you must be a hard core PHP developer.

PHP is one of the easiest languages to learn (and write bad code in), because there is so much code out there in the world, especially on php.net in the comments under each function definition. api.drupal.org is starting to get this way too, with Drupallers leaving useful comments next to Drupal core's functions.

There are 5000 or so Drupal modules, any of which you can fully inspect, copy/paste, rewrite, or republish however you want, thanks to the Drupal.org infrastructure and the GPL license.

Writing PHP apps from scratch is very different from writing a few Drupal modules or themes.

December 20, 2010