Drupal Design Patterns

You can find the session slides at http://www.slideshare.net/erikwebb/drupal-design-patterns
You can find the accompanying blog posts at http://erikwebb.net/blog/drupal-design-patterns

Everyone talks about the “Drupal Way,” often without explaining just what this is. There
are the naming conventions, community standards, and awesome camaraderie, but
there are also many coding tricks that defy documentation. As you navigate throughout
Drupalʼs source, youʼll see many programming techniques (some little-known) used
over and over. These techniques and patterns make programming much easier and
more efficient. During this session, youʼll learn about some of the following tricks -
• Creating your own hooks to make your modules extensible
• Using load arguments in the menu system
• Using static variables to speed up repetitive operations
• Utilizing Drupalʼs cache to improve performance
• Storing complex data easily in the database automatically
• And more!
This presentation is aimed at those developers familiar with module development,
looking to add more tricks to their toolkit to improve performance and make their code
more manageable. Likewise, experienced non-Drupal programmers looking to apply
their skills to Drupal will learn about some of the conventions that make Drupal special
and fun to work with!
NOTE: Most examples used are Drupal 6/7-agnostic. Where there are differences,
these will be noted.
Following the presentation, more details about each design pattern will be posted for
reference on my blog at http://erikwebb.net/. The slides have been posted at http://erikwebb.net/blog/drupal-design-patterns and a video may be seen from the same presentation at an Los Angeles Drupal meetup: http://ladrupal.blip.tv/file/4775787/