clemens-tolboom commented on issue mglaman/drupal-check#15 Jun 21, 2019 clemens-tolboom commented Jun 21, 2019

Using the composer global require mglaman/drupal-check method not working again a was fed up with it so did cd ~/.composer/ rm composer.lock rm -r …

How to Upgrade to Drupal 9: Just Identify and Remove Any Deprecated Code from Your Website radu.simileanu Fri, 06/21/2019 - 15:01

This is no news anymore: preparing to upgrade to Drupal 9 is just a matter of... cleaning your website of all deprecated code. 

No major disruption from Drupal 8. No more compatibility issues to expect (with dread)...

“Ok, but how do I know if my website's using any deprecated APIs or functions? How do I check for deprecations, identify them and then... update my code?”

2 legitimate questions that must be “haunting” you these days, whether you're a:
 

Drupal in the age of FinTech Shankar Fri, 06/21/2019 - 19:11 "There are hundreds of startups with a lot of brains and money working on various alternatives to traditional banking" - Jamie Dimon, CEO, JPMorgan Chase

FinTech and the disruption it can cause to the traditional banking systems is now a hot topic of debate in the banking conferences. Global venture capital funds are super-bullish on this front and are accentuating investments in the FinTech companies. Thanks to the burgeoning demand of FinTech in recent times, more crowdsourcing platforms are letting artists or fledgling entrepreneurs to crowd-source capital from a large constituency of online donors or investors.

For instance, peer to peer (P2P) lending, the high-tech equivalent of borrowing money from friends, helps in raising a loan from an online community at a mutually negotiated interest rate. Also, digital wallet providers allow people to zip money across borders even without any bank accounts using handheld devices.

Amalgamation of these technologies, which goes under the umbrella term FinTech, is expected to metamorphose the way all of us use banking and financial services. And Drupal can act as the perfect content management framework for building a great FinTech platform.

A portmanteau of financial technology

Financial technology, which is referred to as FinTech, illustrates the evolving intersection of financial services and technology. FinTech allows people to innovate while transacting business ranging from digital money to double-entry bookkeeping.

The lines between technology and the financial services are blurring

Since the advent of the internet revolution and later the mobile internet revolution, financial technology has grown multifold. Originally referred to   technology applied to the back office of banks or trading firms, FinTech now caters to a broad variety of technological interventions into personal and commercial finance.

According to EY’s FinTech Adoption Index, one-third of consumers leverage at least two or more FinTech services and more and more of these consumers are also aware of FinTech being a part of their daily lives.

FinTech encompasses the startups, technology companies or even legacy providers. Startups use technology to offer existing financial services at affordable costs and to provide new tech-driven solutions. Incumbent financial enterprises look to acquire or work with startups to drive digital innovation. Technology companies offer payment tools. All these can be seen as FinTech. Surely, the lines between technology and the financial services are blurring.

Origins of FinTech Source: 16Best

In broad lines, the financial industry has seen a gargantuan shift over the years with the way it is leveraged in the times of rapid technological advancements. 16Best has compiled a brief history of FinTech which shows how the gap between financial services and the technology has got bridged over the years.

The gap between financial services and the technology has got bridged over the years.

In 1918, the Fedwire Funds service began offering electronic funds transfer. And while the Great Depression was ravaging the world’s economies, IBM provided some solace with its 801 Bank Proof Cach Machine that offered the means for faster cheque processing. Subsequently, credit cards and ATMs came into existence in the ‘50s and ‘60s.

In 1971, first all-electronic trading emerged in the form of NASDAQ. And in 1973, the SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications) built a unified messaging framework between banks for handling money movement.

1997 was the year which saw the emergence of mobile payment through Coca-Cola Vending Machine. Fast forward to 2000s and the present decade, a slew of innovations crashed into the finance sector with the introduction of digital wallets, contactless payments and cryptocurrencies.

FinTech is definitely re-inventing a quicker and more durable wheel as the world continues to witness a superabundance of new ventures refining financial services with technology.

Merits of FinTech

Financial technology has taken the financial services to a whole new level with a cluster of merits that it offers. Here are some of the major benefits of FinTech:

• Robo Advisors: They are one of the biggest areas of FinTech. These online investment services put users through a slew of questions and then relies on algorithms to come up with an investment plan for them.
• Online Lending: It encompasses all aspects of borrowing from personal loans to refinancing student loans which improves money lending.
• Mobile payments: There is a growing demand for mobile payment options with the stupendous rise of mobile devices over the years.

Total revenue of global mobile payment market from 2015 to 2019 (in billion U.S. dollars) | Statista

Personal Finance and Savings: A plethora of FinTech organisations in the micro saving department have been helping people to save their change for rainy days and a whole lot of them rewarding customers for doing so. For instance, Digit allows you to automate the process of saving extra cash.

Source: Statista

Online Banking and Budgeting: Online banks like Simple reward users for using their ‘automatic savings’ service and also offer a cost-effective option over a traditional bank. Leveraging online tools, they assist users to plan budgets and handle their money smartly from their mobile devices with minimal effort to meet their savings goals.

Insurance: New insurance models have been strengthening the FinTech space. Metromile, an insurance model, sells pay per mile car insurance.

Source: Statista

Regtech: Regulation Technology, which utilises IT to enhance regulatory processes, is one of the significant sectors where numerous FinTech app ideas have come into light around this domain. Regtech is useful for trading in financial markets, monitoring payment transactions and identification of clients among others. For instance, PassFort helps in standardising the online compliance processes.

How is Drupal powering FinTech?

Organisations offering FinTech solutions need to maintain a robust online presence. Drupal has been powering the landscape of FinTech with its enormous capabilities.

The launch of TPG Capital

TPG Capital is one of the major enterprise-level FinTech companies which has leveraged the power of Drupal 8.

One of the primary objectives for TPG’s marketing circuit was to harness the Drupal’s flexibility as a digital empowerment platform. They wanted the ability to make alterations to content on the fly and try out new messaging approaches. Simultaneously, the financial industry’s stringent legal and regulatory requirements called for a flexible TPG platform that would meet the specific needs of the sector thereby offering top-notch security.

Drupal came out as the right choice when it came to the CMS that would facilitate the TPG’s goal for mirroring their cutting-edge business practices and incorporate modern website design and branding.

A digital agency built a responsive, mobile-first site. It featured newer CSS features like Flexbox and CSS animations and minimised the site’s dependence on Compass by introducing auto prefixer. Moreover, Drupal 8 version of Swifttype was built for the search component and contributed back to the Drupal Community.

The launch of Tech Coast Angels

Tech Coast Angels are one of the biggest angel investment organisation in the US. 

Tech Coast Angels selected Drupal as their CMS of choice for its excellent features vis-à-vis user authentication, account management, roles and access control, custom dashboards, intricate web forms for membership and funding application, workflow management and email notifications.

Performance improvements were made by a digital agency to both the Drupal application and the server environments which brought down the costs to a huge extent by minimising the hardware requirements necessary to run the Drupal codebase in both staging and production environments.

With Drupal being one of the most security focussed CMSs, it helped a great deal in making amendments related to security of the site. Views caching were enabled and unnecessary modules were turned off on the production server.

Market trends

The Pulse of FinTech 2018 by KPMG shows that global investments activity in FinTech companies has been steadily rising with 2018 turning out as the most profitable year. It is only going to grow more in the coming years.

In the coming years, the main trends in the asset and wealth management, banking, insurance and transactions and payments services industries can be seen in the illustration above.

Conclusion

FinTech is a great alternative to traditional banks. FinTech excels where traditional banks lag behind. In addition to offering robust financial services leveraging technological advancements, organisations offering FinTech solutions need to have a superb digital presence to offer a great digital experience. Drupal can be an awesome content store for an enterprise-level FinTech platform.

Drupal experts at Opensense Labs have been powering digital transformation pursuits of organisations offering a suite of services.

Contact us at hello@opensenselabs.com to build a FinTech web application for your business using Drupal.

blog banner blog image FinTech Drupal FinTech Drupal and FinTech Financial Technology FinTech platform FinTech web application FinTech website Blog Type Articles Is it a good read ? On

Drupal 8 has been built with mobile devices in mind. It has responsive default themes, responsive admin interfaces, and powerful opportunities for mobile-friendly design. Great Drupal 8 modules are very helpful in implementing any ideas in this area.

Burnout is becoming an increasingly prevalent problem, especially in a field as fast-paced as development. In this post, we'll take a look at how you can spot the symptoms of burnout in your developers and what measures you can take to tackle it.

READ MORE

Disseminating Knowledge: Drupal for Education and E-learning Shankar Fri, 06/21/2019 - 12:26 "Information is a source of learning. But unless it is organized, processed, and available to the right people in a format for decision making, it is a burden, not a benefit." - C. William Pollard, Chairman, Fairwyn Investment Company

Have you always secretly wanted to spend your evenings writing symphonies, learning about filmography or assessing climate change? Studying niche subjects have traditionally been for niche students. But e-learning platforms have changed all that with the provision for learning almost any subject online.

Corporate e-learning has witnessed a stupendous 900% growth in the last decade or so. With more and more e-learning platforms flourishing, organisations are striving to be the best to stand apart from the rest. Drupal has been a great asset in powering education and e-learning with its powerful capabilities that can help enterprises offer a wonderful digital experience. Let’s trace the roots of e-learning before diving deep into the ocean of possibilities with Drupal for building an amazing e-learning platform.

Before the internet era Source: eFront

A brief history of e-learning can be traced through the compilation made by eFront. Even before the internet existed, distance education was being offered. In 1840, Isaac Pitman taught shorthand via correspondence where completed assignments were sent to him via mail and he would, then, send his students more work.

Fast forward to the 20th century, the first testing machine was invented in 1924 that enabled students to test themselves. The teaching machine was invented in 1954 by a Harvard professor for allowing schools to administer programmed instruction to students. In 1960, the first computer-based training program (CBT program) called Programmed Logic for Automated Teaching Operation (PLATO).

At a CBT systems seminar in 1999, the term ‘e-learning’ was first utilised. Eventually, with internet and computers becoming the core of businesses, the 2000s saw the adoption of e-learning by organisations to train employees. Today, a plenitude of e-learning solutions are available in the form of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), Social platforms and Learning Management System among others.

E-learning: Learn anywhere, anytime

In essence, e-learning refers to the computer-based educational tool or system that allows you to learn anywhere and at any time. It is the online method of building skills and knowledge across the complete workforce and with customers and partners. It comes with numerous formats like the self-paced courses, virtual live classrooms or informal learning.

E-learning refers to the computer-based educational tool or system that allows you to learn anywhere and at any time

Technological advancements have diminished the geographical gap with the use of tools that can make you feel as if you are inside the classroom. E-learning provides the ability to share material in all sorts of formats such as videos, slideshows, and PDFs. It is possible to conduct webinars (live online classes) and communicate with professors via chat and message forums.

There is a superabundance of different e-learning systems (otherwise known as Learning Management Systems or LMS) and methods which enable the courses to be delivered. With the right kind of tools, several processes can be automated like the marking of tests or the creation of engrossing content. E-learning offers the learners with the ability to fit learning around their lifestyles thereby enabling even the busiest of persons to further a career and gain new qualifications.

Merits and Demerits

Some of the major benefits are outlined below:

• No restrictions: E-learning facilitates learning without having to organise when and where everyone, who is interested in learning a course, can be present.
• Interactive and fun: Designing a course to make it interactive and fun with the use of multimedia or gamification enhances engagement and the relative lifetime of the course.
• Affordable: E-learning is cost-effective. For instance, while textbooks can become obsolete, the need to perpetually acquire new editions by paying exorbitant amounts of money is not present in e-learning.

Some of the concerns that are needed to be taken care of:

• Practical skills: It is considered tougher to pick up skills like building a wooden table, pottery, and car engineering from online resources as these require hands-on experience.
• Secludedness: Although e-learning enables a person to remotely access a classroom in his or her own time, learners may feel a sense of isolation. Tools such as video conferencing, social media and discussion forums can allow them to actively engage with professors or other students.
• Health concerns: With the mandatory need of a computer or mobile devices, health-related issues like eyestrain, bad posture, and other physical problems may be troublesome. However, sending out proper guidelines beforehand to the learner like correct sitting posture, desk height, and recommendations for regular breaks can be done.

Building Yardstick LMS with Drupal

OpenSense Labs built Yardstick LMS, a learning management system, for Yardstick Educational Initiatives which caters to the students of various schools of Dubai.

Yardstick LMS Homepage

The architecture of the project involved a lot of custom development:

1. Yardstick Core

This is the core module of the Yardstick LMS where the process of creating, updating and deleting the nodes take place.

2. Yardstick Quiz

We built this custom module for the whole functionality of the quiz component. It generates a quiz, quiz palette and quiz report after quiz completion based upon the validation of the visibility of the report.

We could generate three kinds of reports: 

• An individual-level quiz where one’s performance is evaluated
• A sectional-level report where performance for each section is evaluated
• Grade-level report where performance for all the sections is compared and evaluated.

For the quiz, we had different sub-components like questions, options, marks, the average time to answer, learning objective, skill level score, and concept. The same question could be used for different quiz thereby minimising the redundancy of the data. Also, image, video or text could be added for questions.

3. Yardstick Bulk User Import

This module was built to assist the administrators in creating users all at once by importing a CSV file. Also, there is an option to send invitation mail to all the users with login credentials.

4. Yardstick Custom Login

We provided a custom login feature where same login credentials could be used to log into the Yardstick system. That is, we provided an endpoint for verifying the login credentials and upon success, users were logged in.

5. Yardstick Validation

This module offers all the validation across the site whether it is related to access permission or some time validation.

6. Yardstick Challenge

It offers the user an option to submit a task which is assigned to them where they are provided with text area and file upload widget.

Yardstick LMS has an intricate structure

On the end user side, there is a seamless flow but as we go deeper, it becomes challenging. Yardstick LMS has an intricate structure.

We had two kinds of login:

• Normal login using Yardstick credentials
• And the other for school-specific login like the Delhi Public School (DPS) users.

Yardstick LMS custom login for DPS users

For DPS users, we used the same login form but a different functionality for validating credentials. DPS school gave us an endpoint where we sent a POST request with username and password. If the username and password were correct, then that endpoint returned the user information.

If the username was received, we checked on our Yardstick system if the username exists. If it does not exist, then we programmatically created a new user with the information that we received from the endpoint and created a user session. And if does exist, then we updated the password on our system.

Yardstick LMS is designed to govern multiple schools at the same time

We designed Yardstick LMS in such a way that multiple schools can be governed at the same time. All the students of various schools will be learning the same content thereby building uniformity.

The core part of our system dwells in the modules. The module is a content type that can store numerous information like components, concept, description, objective, syllabus among others. 

Several different components can be added like Task, Quiz, Video task, Extension, Feedback, Inspiration, pdf lesson plan, Real life application, and Scientific principles.

Yardstick LMS Real life application component page

Schools could opt for different modules for different grades. When a module was subscribed by a school, a clone module of the master module was created and the school copy was visible only to the school. School version could be modified by the school admin as per their needs and preferences. Master module remained the same. While creating a subscription, administrator had to provide the date so that the components were accessible to the students. School admin could set different dates to different components and only the components with past date were accessible.

Flow Diagram of module subscription to school

Also, we provided an option to create a dynamic feedback form for the modules for analysis. Yardstick Admin had the option to design and create a feedback form as per their requirement and could assign it to a particular module. Different types of elements could be utilised for designing the form like rating, captcha, email, range slider, text field, checkboxes, radio buttons and so on.

Students and teachers need to submit their feedback for each of the modules. On the basis of this, Yardstick team try to improve the content of the system.

Also, various roles were defined for users such as Yardstick Administrator, School Administrator, Teacher, and Student.

1. Yardstick Admin

Yardstick Admin can perform all the operations. He or she can create new users, grant permissions and revoke them as well.

2. School Admin

It has the provision for handling all the operation which are only related to their school. School Admin handles the modules and their components and can import user for their school. All school reports and task submissions are visible to School Admins.

3. Teachers

Teachers can view modules and components assigned to their classes and provide remarks to the students for multiple components and they can view all kinds of reports.

4. Students

They can attempt quiz, submit tasks, view components and view their own reports.

What’s the future of e-learning?

According to a report on Research and Markets, the e-learning market is anticipated to generate revenue of $65.41 billion by 2023 with a growth rate of 7.07% during the forecast period.

The report goes on to state that with the advent of cloud infrastructure, peer-to-peer problem solving and open content creation, more business opportunities would pop up for service providers in the global e-learning market. The introduction of cloud-based learning and AR/VR mobile-based learning will be a major factor in driving the growth of e-learning.

The growth of the e-learning market is due to the learning process enhancements in the academic sector

According to Technavio, the growth of the market is due to the learning process enhancements in the academic sector.

Global self-paced e-learning market 2019-2023 | Source: Technavio

Following are major trends to look forward to:

• Microlearning, which emphasises on the design of microlearning activities through micro-steps in digital media environments, will be on the rise.
• Gamification, which is the use of game thinking and game mechanics in a non-game context to keep the users engrossed and help them solve more problems, will see increased adoption rates.
• Personalised learning, which is the tailoring of pedagogy, curriculum and learning environments to meet the demands of learners, can be a driving force.
• Automatic learning, like the one shown in the movie The Matrix where a person is strapped onto a high-tech chair and a series of martial arts training programs are downloaded into his brain, can be a possibility.

Conclusion

It’s a world which is replete with possibilities. As one of the most intelligent species to walk on this earth, we perpetually innovate with the way we want to lead a better lifestyle. We learn new things to gain more knowledge. And in the process, we find ways of improving our learning experience. E-learning is one such tech marvel that promises to be a force to reckon with. It is not a disrupting technology but something that is going to get bigger and bigger in the years to come.

As a content management framework, Drupal offers a magnificent platform to build a robust e-learning system. With years of experience in Drupal Development, OpenSense Labs can help in providing an amazing digital experience. 

Contact us at hello@opensenselabs.com to build an e-learning system using Drupal and transform the educational experience.

blog banner blog image E-learning Drupal e-learning Drupal and education Yardstick LMS Drupal Learning Management System Drupal LMS LMS Learning Management System E-learning platform E-learning system E-learning application Blog Type Articles Is it a good read ? On

We just moved our Drupal site to DigitalOcean and powered it with fully open-source, Kubernetes infrastructure that you could be using too. This is thrilling for us, and will be for you too!

Reflections of Drupal Camp Chattanooga 2019 Lindsey Gemmill Thu, 06/20/2019 - 15:11

EU Cookie Compliance, one of the top 100 Drupal modules, is a Drupal module that offers a cookie consent banner with various features, making it more convenient for your site to become GDPR compliant. GDPR is the new data privacy regulation that came into effect on 25 May 2018 and it sets out to bolster the rights citizens of the EU have over their data which is held by companies. Ramsalt Lab is currently supporting and maintaining the module as part of our GDPR audit services.

According to GDPR, if you have any traffic from EU citizens on your site, you need to ask for consent before you, or third-party scripts, process any of their personal data.

One recurring GDPR feature request we’ve seen over the past few years has been to allow granularity in the cookie compliance consent, so that the user could accept or decline various cookie categories. This feature has now been added to the recently released versions 8.x-1.6 and 7.x-1.29. You can find the new consent method on the module settings page. To enable this feature, select “Opt-in with categories” as the consent method.

In this blog post, you can learn how to configure the EU Cookie Compliance banner to use GDPR categories, as well as how to use the categories in your code to track the user only when they give consent.

GDPR consent banner configuration

Choosing this consent method reveals an expanded set of fields named “Cookie Categories” that you can find beneath the “Consent method” options. Here you can set up your cookie categories and configure how the banner behaves. Let’s first look at the categories:

Categories are entered using the following pattern: “key|label|description”. The description is optional. The above setup will result in the following EU Cookie Compliance consent banner:

This will result in a fairly large GDPR consent banner. Note that the banner appearance in EU Cookie Compliance is based on a Drupal theme template, so you could always create a theme specific template and for example place the descriptions on the same line as the title, or perhaps have the descriptions appear on hover if space is a concern. By default, the banner has two buttons when you use the category consent method: “Save preferences” and “Accept all cookies”.

Below the text field for cookie consent categories are some additional options. The first option, which is on by default allows you to replace the “Agree” button with the two “Save preferences” and “Accept all cookies” buttons. In addition to labeling the buttons, you can also choose to make the first option compulsory by choosing “Tick the first checkbox and mark it read-only”. You can also choose to “Tick all category checkboxes by default” to make it more convenient for the user to opt-in to cookie usage under GDPR.

Code usage

In order to let your site and javascript comply with the cookie preferences set by the visitor, you may have to write some custom code. Although EU Cookie Compliance has some options to whitelist cookies and block scripts, not all scripts are added to the page source using the standard Drupal methods and can be altered through f.ex hook_js_alter in Drupal 7 (which is what the module attempts to do).

EU Cookie Compliance has for years had a method you can call to check if the user has agreed to store cookies and processing their personal data:

Drupal.eu_cookie_compliance.hasAgreed()

This function will return true when consent is given, and false when the user has declined processing of their data.

With the newly introduced categories, you can call the same function with a parameter:

Drupal.eu_cookie_compliance.hasAgreed(category)

Where ‘category’ is one of the category keys that you have defined on the EU Cookie Compliance module settings page, for example:

if (Drupal.eu_cookie_compliance.hasAgreed('performance')) {
  // Load scripts that deal with performance.
}

Conclusion

Many high profile sites allow visitors to choose among categories when the visitors give consent to the processing of private data through cookies in their browser. Now your site can do offer the same granularity if you use a recent version of the EU Cookie Compliance module.

If you need help setting up your GDPR cookie banner, or have questions about how your site can become GDPR compliant, you can always get in touch with us at Ramsalt Lab through our contact page.

Laravel or Drupal 8? What Are the Key Differences? Which One Best Fits Your Use Case Scenario? adriana.cacoveanu Thu, 06/20/2019 - 13:34

What does Drupal 8 do that Laravel does not? What key functionalities, that Drupal ships with, do you need to build from scratch in Laravel? And how would opting for Laravel benefit your specific type of project? In short: Laravel or Drupal 8?

“It's like comparing apples to oranges” some might say since one's a framework and the other one a CMS.

Even so, if it's unclear to you what are their particular use cases and their built-in features, you can't know whether it's a CMS or a framework that best suits your project type, right? That best serves your project-specific needs:
 

We've been starting many of our projects using Acquia's Lightning distribution. This gives a good, consistent starting point for and helps speed development through early adoption of features that are still-in-the-works for Drupal 8. Like other distributions, Lightning bundles Drupal Core with a set of contributed modules and pre-defined configuration. While Lightning is a great base to start from, sometimes you want to deviate from the path it provides. Say for example you want to use a Paragraphs based system for page components, your client has a fairly complex custom publishing workflow, and you also have different constraints for managing…

Earlier this week at our Acquia Engage conference in London, Acquia announced a new product called "Content Cloud", a headless, SaaS-based content-as-a-service solution built on Drupal.

Years ago, we heard that organizations wanted to:

• Create content that is easy to re-use across different channels, such as websites and mobile applications, email, digital screens, and more.

• Use a content management system with a modern web service API that allows them to use their favorite front-end framework (e.g. React, Angular, Vue.js, etc) to build websites and digital experiences.

As a result, Acquia spent the last 5+ years helping to improve Drupal's web services capabilities and authoring experience.

But we also heard that organizations want to:

• Use single repository to manage all their organization's content.
• Make it really easy to synchronize content between all their Drupal sites.
• Manage all content editors from a central place to enable centralized content governance and workflows.
• Automate the installation, maintenance, and upgrades of their Drupal-based content repository.

All of the above becomes even more important as organizations scale the number of content creators, websites and applications. Many large organizations have to build and maintain hundreds of sites and manage hundreds of content creators.

So this week, at our European customer conference, we lifted the curtain on Acquia Content Cloud, a new Acquia product. Acquia Content Cloud is a content-as-a-service solution that enables simplified, headless content creation and syndication across multi-channel digital experiences.

For now, we are launching an early access beta program. If you’re interested in being considered for the beta or want to learn more as Content Cloud moves toward general availability, you can sign up here.

In time, I plan to write more about Content Cloud, especially as we get closer to its initial release. Until then, you can watch the Acquia Content Cloud teaser video below:

Start:  2019-06-27 08:00 - 09:00 America/Los_Angeles Organizers:  jhodgdon Event type:  Online meeting (eg. IRC meeting)

Please join us for an on-line meeting to discuss plans for updating and reorganizing the "Getting Involved" pages on drupal.org into a new "Contribute" section. All are welcome!

Details:
- The meeting will happen in the #documentation channel on Drupal Slack. For more information on Drupal Slack, see https://www.drupal.org/slack
- To find the meeting time in your time zone, see https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=Drupal+%22Cont...
- Topics to be discussed are in this Google doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IxH4ARJA9ZgbRbk-y7cGorujefr_7c1ZeeKD... -- if you want edit access, find @jhodgdon in Drupal Slack #documentation channel, and send her a direct message with the email address you use for Google.

Earlier this month we launched a redesign of the Commonwealth Fund’s Health System Data Center, a platform for exploring state health system data through custom tables, graphs and maps. With interactive visualizations covering dozens of topics, roughly 100 indicators, and tens of thousands of individual metrics, the platform helps make underlying data actionable for advocates, policy makers, and journalists tackling healthcare system issues all over the country.

We used Drupal 8 to build the data center backend, and we used React and Highcharts to render its interactive charts and graphs. Drupal 8’s flexible entity storage system made it a perfect fit for housing the data. Its capabilities for leveraging third-party APIs and JavaScript libraries made integrating with React and Highcharts far simpler than other alternatives.

We’re all incredibly excited to see the Health System Data Center live. For us at Aten, this is the latest in a series of project launches dealing with data visualization. Along the way, we’ve been working on a collection of tools specifically tailored to the unique needs of data-intensive projects. Here are six Drupal 8 modules that help solve specific challenges when working with data. (Note that some of these are sandbox modules. While sandbox modules don’t have official releases, you can still download the code, try them out, and of course, get involved in the issue queue!)

Six Drupal Modules for Working with Datasets Datasets

We’ve worked on a lot of data projects that use a common architecture. Typically, projects include a collection of Datasets, each of which references a variable number of specific Indicators and Metrics. This module provides custom entities and related functionality for quickly deploying this common architecture.

JS Entity

When embedding multiple instances of a Javascript application on a page (in this specific case, a React app), we often need a way to very quickly pass data to the DOM. This module provides a configurable approach for defining which fields should be passed directly to Drupal’s JavaScript API for each specific view mode. It also offers a number of configuration options, including the ability to rename properties (or field names) to match what your application is looking for.

JS Component

Here at Aten, data projects often involve dynamic visualizations built as JavaScript applications (specifically with React or Vue) that are both embedded within a page rendered by Drupal and leverage data stored in Drupal’s entity system. This module provides an easy way for developers to define JavaScript apps entirely in YAML configuration files, which are exposed in Drupal automatically as blocks. Since they are ultimately just blocks, defined applications can be added to pages by any of the typical means.

MarkJS Search

We often need a way for users to quickly search through a lengthy list of indicators. This module provides fast, responsive highlighting and filtering for search input by leveraging the 3rd-party Mark.js JavaScript library.

Entity Importer

Site owners need a way to keep data accurate, relevant and up-to-date. This module provides a drag-and-drop interface for Drupal’s migrate functionality, making it easy to upload datasets as a series of CSV files. (Learn more from an earlier post: Entity Import: A User Interface for Drupal 8 Migrations.)

Entity Extra Field

When working with JavaScript applications exposed in Drupal as custom blocks, we often want a way to push those blocks directly into the node view page. This module provides a way for site builders to define Extra Fields on entities, which can be blocks, views, or tokens. Extra Fields can be placed and rearranged like any other entity field. (Entity Extra Fields module leverages Drupal’s “Extra Field” system. To learn more about Extra Fields, read Placing Components with Drupal's Extra Fields).

Let’s Talk

If you’re considering a data project for your organization and having trouble getting started, we’d love to help – whether that means talking through long-term goals, responding to a formal RFP, or anything in between. Get in touch and let’s talk about your data.

Our frequent DrupalCamp attender and speaker, DevOps Tess Flynn, returns to the podcast to recap her recent experience at Flyover Camp, a brand new Drupal camp in Kansas City, Missouri.

Host: Ivan Stegic
Guest: Tess Flynn, DevOps Engineer at TEN7

Podcast highlights: 

clemens-tolboom commented on issue drupal-graphql/graphql#811 Jun 19, 2019 clemens-tolboom commented Jun 19, 2019

Note: the new official documentation is on https://drupal-graphql.gitbook.io/graphql/ which I found through #761 ... not searched there for files.

clemens-tolboom opened an issue in drupal-graphql/graphql Jun 19, 2019 Can we make a link to d.o. GraphQL documentation #813

The document links on d.o https://www.drupal.org/project/graphql external is not linked to the new https://drupal-graphql.gitbook.io/graphql/ #761 p…

clemens-tolboom commented on issue drupal-graphql/graphql#811 Jun 19, 2019 clemens-tolboom commented Jun 19, 2019

We do have some documentation on d.o. https://www.drupal.org/docs/8/modules/graphql but not about files. Maybe we should rewrite the Drupal way wha…

Direct .mp3 file download.

Jen Lampton (Backdrop user account), co-founder of Backdrop CMS, senior Drupal developer at Jeneration.com joins Mike Anello and Ryan Price to get reacquainted with Backdrop and to discuss why it could be a good long-term solution for sites after Drupal 7's end-of-life.

Discussion

• Backdrop CMS
• Silkscreen CMS - Backdrop fork.
• Backdrop CMS Mini Camp at Twin Cities Drupal Camp - June 6-8.
• Backdrop status of 100 top Drupal projects.
• Backdrop CMS contributed projects.
• Software Freedom Conservancy
• Support Backdrop CMS
• Jen's DrupalCon Seattle Presentation, A world without features - save time by managing exportables
• Flexible Layouts in Backdrop Core
• Dirk Frimout - the first Belgian in space.

DrupalEasy News

• Drupal Career Online - the 12-week (3 half-days/week) best-practice focused training program begins August 26, 2019. Learn more at one of our free Taste of Drupal webinars in July and August.
• Professional local development with DDEV - 2-hour, hands-on, online workshop held monthly - next workshop: July 16, 2019.
• Local Web Development with DDEV Explained

Upcoming Events

• Drupal Camp Asheville - July 12-14, 2019.
• Drupal Camp Colorado - Denver - August 2-5, 2019.
• BADCamp - Berkeley, CA - October 2-5, 2019.
• DrupalCamp LA - August 24-25, 2019.

Sponsors

• MyDropWizard.com - Long-term-support services for Drupal 6, 7, and 8 sites.
• WebEnabled.com - devPanel.

Follow us on Twitter

• @drupaleasy
• @ultimike
• @jenlampton
• @backdropcms

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In the last article, we programmed a new module which created CSV files from data on a different server. Now, we need to migrate this data into our live-system. As first step we need to create a commerce store to which our products and product variations belong. Otherwise, they cannot be imported.

Migration Commerce Planet Drupal