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Patterns 7.x for developers

You are browsing documentation for an older version of Drupal, which is not supported any longer, and the information may not be correct. See current documentation for Contributed modules

Patterns is a rather complex module, therefore it could take longer than usual to developers and contributors to feel confident with its codebase. This page aims at introducing the Patterns module from a developer perspective. If you want to have a deeper overview of the module after finishing reading this section, please visit the tour of the code section.

This page is still incomplete, if you are a Patterns developer feel free to contribute to it.

The directory structure

Patterns is divided in the following subfolders:

  • components: contains the components' code for running the patterns. If you want to write a pattern component for your own module, this one is probably the folder to look into to get some good examples.
  • includes: a large set of helping and core functions used by the Patterns module. The name of the includes are usually self-explicative.
  • css and js: contain a set of statis css and js files used by Patterns.
  • patterns: contains a number of examples of patterns files. You should not place your own patterns here, but rather create your own patterns directory somewhere in your file system.
  • tests: a fairly comprehensive battery of simple tests to check that Patterns is functioning as expected.
  • patterns_*: directories starting with this prefix contain a submodule. Please read the .info file for a description.

Important Patterns API

If you want to integrate your module with Patterns you will find useful the following methods:

  • patterns_io_save_pattern($content = NULL, $name = NULL, $format = 'yaml', $dir = NULL): save a valid pattern into the specified pattern directory and into the database. If the pattern code is invalid return FALSE.
  • patterns_db_save_pattern($pattern, $path, $name) : save a pattern into the database. No validation is performed, therefore it should be used carefully. If a pattern with the same name is found, it updates it.

Important Patterns hooks

Please read here.

Patterns conventions

  • Since patterns codebase grew large, all functions are named after the include they are part of. e.g. patterns_io_save_pattern can be found inside /includes/io.inc.

Writing a component for Patterns 7.x

A Patterns component is very much like a driver software: It is an interface between input data (user input) and the Drupal backend

Writing a custom parser for Patterns 7.x

Writing a Patterns parser is relatively straightforward, and it requires understanding the abstract pattern model, implementing just one

Writing an export function for a Patterns component

This page deals with an experimental feature of the Patterns module: Automatic exporting the configuration of a Drupal web site.

Guide maintainers

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