I was especially taken by how awesome and logical theming is in Drupal 8 it's now super refined and powerful.

Thanks to my company, Jackson River for making my attendance to the camp possible, I was inspired by Drupal all over again and moreover, by Drupal 8. It all started with attending SANDCamp here in San Diego at the end of February. Getting inspired all over againįast forward to 2016 and now that Drupal 8 has been out for almost six months, I decided to dig in again. I tested out Backdrop during that time as well, but honestly I was not happy with Backdrop's theming layer it seemed disjointed to me. In fact, these broad changes with Drupal 8 prompted the forking of Drupal 7 into a new platform called Backdrop CMS, which would carry the essence of Drupal 7 into the future while taking some of the refinements made to Drupal 8 and splitting the difference. I experimented with it while in the early alpha stages, but for a themer it was frustrating as there were constant code changes to core (as was to be expected), and the theming layer was constantly evolving. I remember feeling caught in the middle of these two camps, not really being able to come to any conclusion for some time to come.Īdmittedly, I had my reservations about Drupal 8 but I really wanted to give it a chance. Combined with an interactive debugger, there's virtually nothing that can't be easily discovered when a developer can wield both of these tools.When Drupal 8 and its innovative architectural changes were first announced several years back, there were a variety of reactions within the community ranging from euphoria and elation, to FUD and potential abandonment of the platform altogether. Using Kint efficiently is one of the skills that every Drupal 8 developer should have. This provides an almost-too-convenient-to-believe search box with each Kint output that makes finding things almost trivial. I download and install the Search Kint module whenever I download and install the Devel module for a local environment.Rather, I click output anywhere other than the '+' to open just that portion of the output. I almost never click on the '+' anymore.Depending on the variable you're Kint-ing, this could result in a lot of output to sort through (and, depending on your machine, browser, and site configuration, it could take more than a few seconds to fully render).Īfter a few weeks of instinctively (and incorrectly) clicking on the '+ button every time I used Kint, I've now retrained myself to utilize it in a much more efficient manner. It took me a few weeks to get comfortable with Kint, mainly due to one small interface thing clicking on the '+' icon in a Kint output recursively opens all the arrays and objects. In Drupal 8, kint($variable_name) can be used to output any variable - this works in template files as well via. Using Kint is similar to using Krumo, where in Drupal 7, any dsm($variable_name) or dpm($variable_name) call automatically used Krumo to display variables on the page in a way that made it easy(ier?) to dive into the many Drupal PHP arrays and objects. Like its predecessor, when you install the Devel project on a Drupal 8 local environment, you automatically get the Kint module as well (like Krumo, there are no additional downloads). Say goodbye to Krumo, and say hello to Kint. As part of the massive changes to the Drupal 8 (front- and back-end) developer experience, the Devel module for Drupal 8 comes with a new variable inspector. Drupal 8's new theming system is a thing of beauty.

Drupal devel kint extras