Nick's tutorials and tech notes - basically any how to type thing that is less than a full presentation.

PHP 8.4 Nullable Types

Date
Status
Up to date
Date Reviewed

PHP 8.4 - released at the end of November 2024 - has deprecated implicit nullable types. For many years (since PHP 5.1), types on function arguments could have a default value of null provided even if the type itself was not nullable.

The Joy of Automated Tests

Automated testing summary for the NG Lightbox Drupal module
Date
Date Reviewed

Automated tests are such a joy.  I have at times deleted tests but I've never regretted writing them. Today was a good reminder.

Getting the parent node of a Drupal 8+ node

Date
Status
Old but mostly relevant
Date Reviewed

There are some circumstances that you want to get data from the node one level up a menu from your current node. However, doing that is not self-explanatory since there isn't actually any direct relationship between the nodes. I'll be referring to the nodes as "parent" and "child" for simplicity despite this.

Setting up Brotli Extension for PHP

Date
Status
Old but mostly relevant
Date Reviewed

The Brotli extension for PHP, integrates the Brotli compression algorithm for use in PHP. Brotli compression is similar to gzip but has a higher compression ratio - up to 30% bandwidth savings.

Including Patches in Drupal Contrib Modules

Date
Status
Old but mostly relevant
Date Reviewed

Occasionally in building a Drupal module (this was especially relevant for  7.x but even with 11 is still relevant), you can't actually quite do what you want to do without a change to another module or core. Every effort should be made to avoid that but there are instances that it is truly required and the right method.