when-not-a-module-for-that/2024-nedcamp-when-not-a-module-make-and-maintain.md

New England Drupal Camp @ Rhode Island College  
Providence, RI  
November 16, 2024  
#NEDCamp2024  
9am, Gaige Hall 201

#### When There's Not a Module for That: How to Make (and Maintain) a New Module

benjamin "mlncn" melançon  
ben@agaric.coop

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### Agaric Technology Collective

![The Agaric logo, a blue outline mushroom.](content/images/agaric-icon.png)

presents

Note: my name's ben, i have been a worker and owner at the worker-owned Agaric cooperative since 2006.

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## When There's *Not*
## a Module for That:
### How to Make (and Maintain)
### a New Drupal Module

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### Be a part of something bigger
(but not as big as all of Drupal)

#### Commerce
#### Extra Field
#### ECA
#### Search API (and friends)

Note: Build on or with some major —and with luck join a community of 

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##### Example: BEF Links Filter

[drupal.org/project/bef_links_filter](https://www.drupal.org/project/bef_links_filter)

Search API's friends include Facets and Better Exposed Filters

Note: By extending BEF Links module, we were able to get a lot of power— with a much better user experience, thanks to our ~250 lines of code altogether.

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#### Look for plugin opportunities

Literally, look for plugins,

in `src/Plugin` of whatever modules you are operating in the vicinity of.

BEF Links Filter is a `better_exposed_filters` plugin in about 250 lines of code altogether.


Doing your own or copying 

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### Steal, and keep stealing

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![A large button with the label "+ Add content block"](images/add-content-block-action-link.png)

Note: If you decide your module should have one of those button links you see at the top right of a bunch of pages in Drupal's administration, you *don't even need to know* that they are called "Action Links" and find a tutorial on making them.  You can just go look in the code of a module you know has them, grep for the label, and steal the code around it.

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![grep -nHIRs "Add content block" web/core/ with a half-dozen results, including web/core/modules/block_content/block_content.links.action.yml:9 and a bunch of results in tests.](images/grep-add-content-block-action-link.png)

Note: Grep.  Even when i am fully using an IDE for everything else, i grep in the regular command line when looking for text in a file.  This habit is probably fueled more by failing to tell the IDE to index Drupal core and contrib modules more than anything else.

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!["block_content_add_action:
  route_name: block_content.add_page
  title: 'Add content block'
  appears_on:
    - block.admin_library
    - entity.block_content.collection
  class: \Drupal\block_content\Plugin\Menu\LocalAction\BlockContentAddLocalAction"](images/yml-add-content-block-action-link.png)

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To be continued…

Note: Let me know what you build!