Drupal Rules how-to: book review

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Itangalo's picture

Book Title: Drupal Rules how-to
Website: Packt Publishing
Author: Robert Varkonyi
Publisher: Packt Publishing
Reviewer: Veturi JV Subramanyeswari, Liran Tal

In short

The book Drupal Rules how-to is a good way to getting started in using the Rules module. It contains a number of step-by-step instructions on how to set up various Rules configuration, and short explanations on how the configuration works. The book is really a how-to: If your ambitions is to understand how the Rules module works, rather than just using it, you'll have to do quite a bit of puzzling yourself. It should also be mentioned that the book contains some inacurracies, and there are even some bad practice being promoted. The most impressive feature of the book is its span: It will really show you Rules functionality from beginner to expert level.

The goods

  • It's a good start for actually using Rules.
  • It is very practical – concrete tasks being solved, and quite details step-by-step instructions with a lot of screenshots.
  • The book covers both beginner Rules configuration, quite advanced configuration, and even some coding for the Rules module.
  • The book is short (just over 50 pages).

The bads

  • There is only one example per concept, which can make it rather difficult to grasp the underlying ideas.
  • The author has confused some concepts in some examples. Also, some important points in Rules are left out, or are explained very briefly. (Rules Scheduler and the concept of loops, for example, are barely explained at all, and the feature of chained token replacement patterns is missing.)
  • There are examples of bad practices in the book (such as using the PHP filter or calling the database without using the proper in-between functions).
  • The book is short.

Who should buy this book?

  • You who haven't used Rules yet, and would like to see what you can do with the module.
  • You who have used Rules a bit, and would like to see how to make more of it – including writing code.

Drupal Rules how-to compared to some other resources for learning Rules

The Tiny Book of Rules explains concepts rather than examples, has more code examples, is more accurate, and is shorter.
Drupal Rules how-to has more examples and step-by-step instructions.

Learn the Rules framework is video-based, has more examples, covers more concepts, explains concepts as well as examples and is more accurate.
Drupal Rules how-to is a quicker to read, more to the point, has better English and is printed.

Rules Mastery training is video-based, has exercises (and solutions), covers more concepts and examples, and is more accurate.
Drupal Rules how-to is quicker to read, has better English and is printed.

The Rules chapter in Drupal 7 – the Essentials explains concepts rather than examples, covers more concepts, has exercises (and solutions) and is more accurate.
Drupal Rules how-to covers coding for Rules, is quicker to read and has better English than the printed version of Drupal 7 – the Essentials.

Comments

Thanks Johan for the fair

rvarkonyi's picture

Thanks Johan for the fair review and I appreciate your comments!

I pre-ordered the book and

busla's picture

I pre-ordered the book and was reaaaaally hoping for a chapter on Rules, Page Manager and Panels. Hopefully it will be added in the revised edition. Explaining how to access all objects loaded in a panel would be a great addition to this book.

Apart from that it was helpful.

I'm a fan of Johan and a true

donnadion's picture

I'm a fan of Johan and a true believer of using rules, but this is my very first post - I joined drupal.org today because busla mentioned my exact question:

How do I access all of the objects loaded in my panel so that I can set data values using rules?

Sorry I haven't read the reviewed book, but I have read/viewed all the compared resources. btw, I'll be glad to contribute once I figure out how to solve something new.

thank you!

Rules Panes

Itangalo's picture

Hi

Thanks for the kind words!
I'm not 100% I get your question right, but I think the answer is Rules Panes: http://drupal.org/project/rules_panes

Check out the videos, linked from the project page. Hopefully they will tell you pretty soon if that is the module you're looking for or not.

Happy Drupalling,
//Johan Falk, Sweden

Rules Panes

donnadion's picture

Thank you very much for the quick reply...Rules panes looks like just what I need, although it will take a little time to wrap my head around it. Your project/task example was very helpful, quite similar to my use case, as I need to fill fields in the "task" from the "project". I really liked the ability to modify just one field in the task with a separate action, and I hadn't considered the possibilities using VBO.

I also just learned why Rules Panes didn't show up in my searches, I always use Drupal 7 to filter out earlier versions, and so google didn't find it. Sounds like user error, but maybe also a tagging thing??

thanks again!
Donna

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