Tagged Backend Development

So You Need to Update to Drupal 8.8.x?

Welcome! If you need to update your Drupal 8 site to the latest feature branch, this post is for you. 

Drupal 8.8.0 introduced many exciting changes. On the heels of this release, we also saw a security release for Drupal 8.8.1, which covers four distinct security advisories (SAs). Drupal 8.7.11 also has fixes for those SAs, but developers might consider this a golden opportunity to take care of both updates at once.

Drupal 8 logo with text 8.8.x presented below

The Twelve Days of AWS: Aurora

We've made it to the final day, the 12th day of AWS!

Talking of RDBMSs, with all of the Data Lakes, Data Warehousing, NoSQL solutions available on AWS, it is nice to still have access to a good old RDBM, which Aurora provides, with both MySQL and PostgreSQL flavors.

12 Days of AWS Day 12 written around snowflakes with a penguin ice fishing

The Twelve Days of AWS: EC2

Despite being what most people think about when mentioning AWS, I left their Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) until now, mostly because personally I don’t use it all that much.

With the advent of Lambda, EC2 can feel a bit more laborious as there is a lot more set up involved than with serverless solutions.

12 Days of AWS Day 9 written around snowflakes with a penguin opening a gift

The Twelve Days of AWS: Serverless

While this is not an actual AWS tool, it is something so useful for setting up Lambdas that it deserves a day to itself.

When looking for how to get started with Lambdas I ran into Serverless pretty quickly. It’s a framework that does a lot of the nitty-gritty and heavy lifting involved with configuring the elements that surround the code written inside the Lambdas.

12 Days of AWS Day 3 written around snowflakes with a penguin wearing a winter sweater

The Twelve Days of AWS: Lambda

When I needed to perform small operations on files stored in S3, I turned to this next tool in the AWS arsenal, Lambda. Lambda is effectively a ‘serverless’ script running platform, whereas of the time of writing, code in Node.js, Python, Java, Ruby, Go, C# or PowerShell will be run whenever triggered by specific events. A few examples of these events are: S3 Object uploaded, Amazon Alexa, and Manual trigger via the Lambda UI.

12 Days of AWS Day 2 written around snowflakes with a penguin wearing earmuffs dancing

How to Streamline Update Hooks Using the Batch API

When maintaining a Drupal 8 site in production, it’s often necessary to make changes within the site’s database, specifically when it comes to modifying settings or data that is not handled by Drupal’s YAML file-based configuration management API. Some common examples of settings or data not handled by the configuration management API include the following:

Hook42 Team
Open laptop in coffee shop with Batch API Updates and Drupal 8 logo on screen

Drupal 8 Interviews: Spotlight on Andrew Dunkle from Go Overseas

Andrew Dunkle is the CTO of Go Overseas. Go Overseas is a platform that strives to help people find meaningful travel experiences abroad. They often describe themselves as the Yelp or Airbnb of study abroad programs. Volunteers, recent high school graduates, or anyone who is looking to travel in a more impactful way can use the site to find opportunities. Andrew and his business partner, Mitch, co-founded the company in 2008, while teaching together in Taiwan. They recognized the need for a platform to provide information and encouragement about taking the opportunity to go overseas and give back at the same time.

Hook42 Team
GoOverseas logo and Andrew Dunkle photo

Drupal 8 Interviews: Spotlight on Jill Cohen from Autodesk

 

Jill Cohen is a Senior Software Application Engineer at Autodesk Inc. Autodesk is a global company that empowers users to design and create just about everything on this planet - and in virtual worlds. She works with the Digital Platform and Experience Organization on the Digital Help team, which manages the Autodesk Knowledge Network and Services Marketplace. She is also on the board for Autodesk Women in Leadership.

Hook42 Team
Jill Cohen smiling from her desk

Being Drupal Adjacent

One of the major objectives of Drupal 8 is the desire to “get off the island.” Drupal opened its doors to using and contributing to a broader ecosystem of projects instead of replicating functionality in Drupal. We now see tools like Twig and various Symfony components in Core. Contributed modules are also able to integrate projects and Software Development Kits (SDKs). For example, Password Strength, Digital Ocean, and Hubspot API integrate through Drupal’s native use of Composer. This philosophy helps those of us that more closely identify as “Drupal Adjacent.”

Hook42 Team
Drawing of people holding up a Drupal log, reads "It takes a village"