CREATING AND USING PLUGINS AS A MODULE DEVELOPER

Ever wanted to learn about Drupal plugins as a module developer? Ever wondered what makes Drupal plugins work or why they’re useful? Well, literally every Drupal 8 module uses the Drupal plugin system! At their core, plugins are extensible bits of functionality. They are in YAML files, in Annotation classes, in hooks, and/or can be defined statically. Plugins can also have a custom discovery mechanism. Just create a custom plugin discovery class and use a plugin manager service.In this tutorial, you will learn:

How to use Drupal plugins
How to create new plugins
Why choose to use plugins

We will explore plugin discovery, plugin decorators, plugin management, plugin derivatives, and plugin definitions. You'll learn how to wrap functionality around the main Plugin discovery class with a Plugin discovery decorator. Using a Plugin decorator, you can provide or alter existing configurations, and/or provide multiple discovery methods. Plugins are in many places and are crucial to every module in Drupal. Having a hard time thinking about what plugins already exist in Drupal? There are quite a few!

Some YAML plugins include routing, menu links, libraries and permissions
Some Annotation plugins include blocks, field types, actions, entity reference selections, content and configuration entity types

This session covers an expansive view of Drupal Plugins. It is meant for Drupal developers who are well versed in module development or at least have some background in creating Drupal modules. The duration of this session is around 25-30 minutes with enough time to answer questions you may have about what is being presented along the way.