4.5 Demonstrate ability to write code using Drupal Coding Standards

Review Drupal Coding Standards such as line spacing between @doc blocks. Review PHP constants.
A Review of some key Drupal.org Drupal Standards.

Indenting and Whitespace

  • Use an indent of 2 spaces, with no tabs.
  • Lines should have no trailing whitespace at the end.
  • One line space between namespace and use statements same with annotations and classes.

Annotations

Annotations are formatted docblocks that use PS4 to autoload classes into memory. In Drupal 8 they are used for plugin discovery metadata and configuration.
For example the TelephoneLinkFormatter in the core telephone field module annotation block
/**
* Plugin implementation of the 'telephone_link' formatter.
*
* @FieldFormatter(
* id = "telephone_link",
* label = @Translation("Telephone link"),
* field_types = {
* "telephone"
* }
* )
*/

Naming Conventions

Coding standards ensure that a team can cohesively work together on maintainable code. A few naming conventions to note are:
  • classes: UpperCamel Classes should not use underscores.
  • methods: lowerCamel
  • variables: $lowerCamelCase or $snake_case
  • PHP constants: always uppercase const CACHE_TEMPORARY = -1;

Other Resources