Description of skill set "Basic Drupal coding skills"

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This page relates to the Skill sets described in the open curriculum project, and tries to describe one of the skill sets. See this page a collaborative notebook, and feel free to edit and improve it.


Some things that could fit into this skill set:

Basic PHP skills

  • Using variables, including the most common variable operators
  • Using arrays, including associative arrays and nested arrays
  • Using conditional statements (including alternative syntax for assigning new values to variables)
  • Basic object handling
  • Declaring functions
  • Using loops (including foreach loops)
  • Knowing the difference between passing a variable and passing a variable by reference
  • Using include, include_once, require and require_once

Drupal coding

  • Knowing and following Drupal coding standards
  • In particular, knowing how to use doxygen commenting according to Drupal standards
  • Using and partly understanding the Drupal hook system
  • Using and partly understanding the Drupal hook_alter system
  • Being able to create new modules from scratch
  • Basic familiarity with the form and render system (including knowledge about some of the form/render elements, and the hook_form_alter and hook_form_FORM_ID_alter functions)
  • Knowing how to look up API documentation for Drupal core, and the most-used modules
  • Being able to interpret well-documented Drupal code examples (at a reasonably complex level)

Other

  • Being comfortable with version control of code
  • Being familiar with what integrated development environments are, and in particular knowing how to get a coding environment that supports syntax highlighting and function documentation