Creating or writing Patterns

Methods

There are a few planned methods of creating patterns. Currently patterns need to be written manually until the exporter/builder are complete.

1. Patterns Exporter/Recorder
2. Patterns Builder
3. Write Patterns Manually

Patterns Exporter/Recorder

Developers are working on adding the ability to export any form/page to a pattern. A user will be able to go to any form on the site and click a button to add that form to a new or existing pattern. There will also be the option to start recording and then walk through some steps on the site and have everything recorded and added to a pattern.

Patterns Builder

The Patterns Builder will guide the user through choosing from a list of Drupal entities on an existing site such as Menus, Content types (and fields,) Views, Blocks, Roles, Permissions, etc., and pick which of them they want to add to new or existing patterns.

Writing Patterns Manually

Until the exporter, recorder or builder are done Patterns should be written manually. That might sound scary, but it's not very hard. Writing and reading YAML is very easy because it's a simple text based format. Have a look at the YAML example provided with the module.

This initial documentation is geared towards the XML format but all of this applies the same to writing in YAML which will likely be much easier or fun for you to write. A little review of the YAML syntax will let you easily write any of the examples in YAML until we convert all of them to YAML for you.

File structure:

Pattern syntax: (Please note these are initial versions and some still need to be finished.)

Core:
Block
Menu
Taxonomy
Profile
System
User
Node
Variables

Contrib:
Content (CCK)
Views
Imagecache
Pathauto
Token/Identifiers

Feel free to get involved or ask questions at the Patterns group or the Patterns issue queue.