Top 60 Drupal Interview Questions: A Step-by-Step Guide
In this article, we’ll see list of Drupal Interview Questions and Answers.
Drupal, a powerful and versatile content management system (CMS), has gained significant popularity in the web development community. If you’re preparing for a Drupal interview or aiming to enhance your Drupal knowledge, this blog post is for you.
We have compiled a list of commonly asked Drupal interview questions and provided comprehensive answers to help you prepare effectively and boost your chances of success.
Drupal Interview Questions and Answers
Here are some of the most common Drupal interview questions:
1) What Is Drupal?
Drupal (pronounced Dru-Pull) is an open-source content management system offering a toolset that rivals those of most commercial alternatives. With integrated social media and e-commerce functionality, it provides unique value as part of your social media strategy.
2) How to create a folder and a module file in Drupal?
Given that our choice of short name is “onthisdate”, start the module by creating a folder in your Drupal installation at the path: sites/all/modules/onthisdate. You may need to create the sites/all/modules directory first.
Create a PHP file and save it as onthisdate.module in the directory sites/all/modules/onthisdate. As of Drupal 6.x, sites/all/modules is the preferred place for non-core modules (and sites/all/themes for non-core themes), since this places all site-specific files in the sites directory.
This allows you to more easily update the core files and modules without erasing your customizations. Alternatively, if you have a multi-site Drupal installation and this module is for only one specific site, you can put it in sites/your-site-folder/modules.
The module is not operational yet: it hasn’t been activated.
We’ll activate the module later in the tutorial.
3) How to name your module?
The first step in creating a module is to choose a “short name” for it. This short name will be used in all file and function names in your module, so it must start with a letter and by Drupal convention it must contain only lower-case letters and underscores.
For this example, we’ll choose “onthisdate” as the short name. Important note: It is not just a convention that the short name is used for both the module’s file name and as a function prefix. When you implement Drupal “hooks” (see later portions of tutorial), Drupal will only recognize your hook implementation functions if they have the same function name prefix as the name of the module file.
It’s also important to make sure your module does not have the same short name as any theme you will be using on the site.
4) Explain the menu system in Drupal?
Define the navigation menus, and route page requests to code based on URLs.
The Drupal menu system drives both the navigation system from a user perspective and the callback system that Drupal uses to respond to URLs passed from the browser.
For this reason, a good understanding of the menu system is fundamental to the creation of complex modules. Drupal’s menu system follows a simple hierarchy defined by paths. Implementations of hook_menu () define menu items and assign them to paths (which should be unique). The menu system aggregates these items and determines the menu hierarchy from the paths.
For example, if the paths defined were a, a/b, e, a/b/c/d, f/g, and a/b/h, the menu system would form the structure:
a
a/b
a/b/c/d
a/b/h
e
f/g
5) How to interact with the Drupal search system?
There are three ways to interact with the search system:
Specifically for searching nodes, you can implement nodeapi (‘update index’) and nodeapi (‘search result’). However, note that the search system already indexes all visible output of a node, i.e. everything displayed normally by hook_view () and hook_nodeapi (‘view’).
This is usually sufficient. You should only use this mechanism if you want additional, non-visible data to be indexed.
Implement hook_search (). This will create a search tab for your module on the /search page with a simple keyword search form. You may optionally implement hook_search_item () to customize the display of your results.
Implement hook_update_index (). This allows your module to use Drupal’s HTML indexing mechanism for searching full text efficiently.
If your module needs to provide a more complicated search form, then you need to implement it yourself without hook_search (). In that case, you should define it as a local task (tab) under the /search page (e.g. /search/mymodule) so that users can easily find it.
6) How to Customize a Drupal Syndicate Feed Icon?
For a recent project I needed to customize the feed icon in the Drupal theme I was creating. This wasn’t as straight forward as I thought it would be. Being the drupal newbie that I am I went looking for it in the core templates and suggestions page only to come empty handed.
Previously I found the solution to theming a search form by using the search-block-form.tpl.php template file and thought there would be one for the feed icon too.
I found the solution to this in the function reference in the form of a theme hook.
theme_feed_icon($url, $title)
This function is internally called by drupal to generate the feed icon in the Syndicate block. Our Job is to override this function.
7) How to backup a Drupal site?
Backing up your Drupal site is now very easy, you just need to download and install a module called Backup & Migrate. To install the module click on the Administer Modules check the Backup and Migrate module and enable it and save the settings.
Then navigate to the Administer Content Management Backup and Migrate then do the following settings.
► Exclude the following tables altogether: select the table which you dont want to take backup.
► Give the backup file name.
► There are also options to compress the file before download, or add a datestamp.
► And then click Backup Database.
Alternately you can take backups using PhpMyAdmin.
8) How to move a Drupal Site from One host/server to another on your NEW host?
► Upload your folder with the complete drupal installation to your home-directory.
► Once done, go to phpadmin on the new host, create a new mysql database, example “name_drpl1” and create a new mysql user. Create a password for this new mysql user, click “assign all privileges” to this user and assign the user to the new database.
You now should have a new mysql database on the new host with a mysql user, eg. “name_drpl1” as database name and “name_username” as database user name.
► Import (upload) the database (which you exported from the old host earlier) with phpadmin to the new database. This might take a minute.
► If needed edit the file [drupal home]/sites/default/settings.php and edit at the section where you enter the database, location, username and password. You CAN enter the password either encrypted or not encrypted there.
► Chmod your “files” folder so it is writeable using your ftp client (filezilla), chmod to 777
► Double check your .htaccess and [drupal home] /sites/default/settings.php and make changes in case they are needed.
Change nameserves on your domain host and let them point to your new host’s nameservers.
Enter the new nameservers in your control panel where your domain names are hosted, overwriting the old ones.
After some time (sometimes a day or two) your domain should point to the new host and drupal should be up and running on the new host.
9) How to move a Drupal Site from One host/server to another?
Migrating Drupal On your OLD host:
► Backup your whole home directory from your ftp access using an ftp client like filezilla. Make a folder on your local harddisk and download the complete directory to that local folder.
► Backup your mysql database on your old host using phpadmin, select your mysql database, usually something like “name_drpl1”. Select all fields, click “export” and save the database to your local harddisk. Leave default options enabled. You will receive a file similar to “name_drpl1.sql”.
This is your mysql database
10) How to install Drupal on a local WAMP server?
Preparing your computer with a local installation of Drupal with WampServer is comparatively a trouble-free process to follow. Since WampServer will install an Apache-server, SQL, PHP and phpMySQL on your computer, with those tools you can install and run Drupal locally even without an internet connection.
11) How to remove breadcrumbs from my Drupal pages?
Breadcrumbs or breadcrumb trail is a navigation aid used in drupal interfaces. Normally it appears in between the top banner area and the page title. It gives users a way to keep track of their location within programs.
Breadcrumbs are really useful in a comparatively bigger website with plenty of sections and subsections. But when it comes to smaller websites, it may found useless. In those cases you may either hide it using CSS (eg. .breadcrumb {display: none;}) or in the page.tpl.php file remove the line that says
12) How to add custom PHP codes in my Drupal pages or blocks?
By default, drupal will not allow inserting PHP code directly inside a post or in a block. To do this, you need to activate a drupal module called PHP filter via, Administer Site building Modules. Even though this module ships with drupal, it remains disabled by default.
13) How can I create a custom region in my Drupal template?
Adding a new region in your drupal template is not a hard thing, but its not as easy as adding a new block. It’s basically a two-step process:
► define the custom region in your theme’s .info file
► insert some PHP in your theme’s page.tpl.php file wherever you would like the new region to appear
14) What does Views do and how do you use it?
Views is a practical necessity for sites built on Drupal 6, and it’s imperative that your developer understands how to take advantage of it. Earl Miles has written a great summary on the Views project page.
15) How can I add a new Block In Drupal?
Adding a new block is a simple process in drupal 6.
► Go to Administer Blocks and click on the Add Block link (tab).
► Fill in the form with the necessary PHP/HTML code in the block body. And click the ‘Save Block’ button.
16) How can I customize my 404 – Page not found page?
Create a new page with some extra information, so that your visitors don’t ever plunge on to the default boring 404 – page not found error page.
Once this page is created:
► Remember its node ID,
► Go to Administer > Site configuration > Error reporting
► Set Default 404 (not found) page to the node ID you just created
► Save your settings
You can also use the Search 404 module as an alternative.
17) How to handle upgrades in Drupal?
It’s a fact of life that you’ll have to upgrade your Drupal installation and contributed modules fairly frequently. Your candidate should mention:
► backing up the site,
► putting it into maintenance mode
► downloading the new version of the module
► uncompressing it
► running update.php
► testing the site
► taking the site out of maintenance mode
Ideally, your candidate would also mention creating a development environment to minimize downtime. There is also a big difference between upgrading a module (process described above) and a Drupal minor version upgrade, which requires more careful patching.
Drupal major version upgrades, which happen every couple years, are another can of worms entirely.
18) How do I show different Drupal themes on different pages?
Yeah it’s possible! You can apply different themes to different pages in your drupal site simply with the help of a cool module called ‘Sections’.
19) How do I add images to Drupal?
Image module allows users with proper permissions to upload images into Drupal. Thumbnails and additional sizes are created automatically.
Images could be posted individually to the front page, included in stories or grouped in galleries.
20) How can I translate Drupal to my local language?
The interface text (like the “Log in” button and the “Add new comment” text) is in English by default, but can be translated. For many languages, there are completed or partly completed translations available. (See the locale module on how to use them.)
All languages need more translation contributions. Some have only incomplete versions of the text in core, so that parts of the interface will show up in English. Others may be complete but need corrections and improvements of the language. And no language has a complete set of translations for all contributed modules.
21) How do I remove the title ‘Navigation’ from the navigation block?
To prevent the navigation block title or any other block title from appearing in the pages, just do the following.
► Navigate to Administer Site building Blocks and click the configure link next to the Navigation block.
► In the block configuration page, enter in the Block title filed. This will override the default title for the block and remove the title.
22) How do I get my site to have SEO-friendly URLs?
The Pathauto module automatically generates URL/path aliases for various kinds of content (nodes, taxonomy terms, users) without requiring the user to manually specify the path alias.
This allows you to have URL aliases like /category/my-node-title instead of /node/123. The aliases are based upon a “pattern” system that uses tokens which the administrator can change.
23) How can I enable clean URLs in Drupal?
Drupal’s default URL structure is like “http://www.sitename.com/?q=node/10″ This URL format can be hard to read, and can sometimes prevent search engines from indexing all your pages properly. In this case you can eliminate this “?q=” and clean the URLs through the following steps.
Navigate to Administer Site configuration Clean URLs. By default, it will be disabled. Select enabled and click the save configuration button. You are done.
You can make your URLs even more cleaner with the help of path module.
Home Administer Site building Modules: enable the Path Module.
24) How can I change the favicon in my Drupal Site?
► Create your own favicon.ico file using any graphic tools or with the help of any online favicon generator tools like dnamicdrive.
► Navigate to admin site building themes and click the configure link next to your current theme. This will bring up the theme configuration page.
► Here you will see a section titled Shortcut icons settings. You can either upload your favicon file or specify the path to your customized icon file.
The changes may not appear immediately in your browser, you need to clear your browser’s cache and reload the page. If you have bookmarked your site, you may need to delete the bookmark and then recreate it again so that the new favicon will appear in the bookmarks menu.
25) Explain favicon in Drupal?
A favicon (short for favorites icon), also known as a website icon or bookmark icon is a 1616 pixel square icon that appears near the address bar and in the bookmarks folder in a visitor’s browser. By default, a drupal site shows that water drop kinda drupal logo as favicon.
26) How can I reset my Drupal admin password?
Login to cPanel -> Databases box -> phpMyAdmin;
► Select the Druapl database folder from the left navigation bar. The page will refresh and and the Drupal database’s tables will be displayed on it.
► Click on the SQL tab.
► In the text field write the following SQL query:
update users set pass=md5(‘NEWPASS’) where uid = 1; where “NEWPASS” is your new Drupal administrative password.
Click the GO button to submit the query. If the query is executed correctly and no errors are displayed then you should be able to login with the new password.
27) How to install a new module in Drupal?
After finding and downloading a module, the next step would be to copy it the modules folder. Most people copy the file to the default modules folder here http://sitename.com/drupal/modules this is where all the modules that ship with Drupal are stored so it seems somewhat logical to do this.
But this folder is actually meant to store only Drupal’s default modules. Instead you should go to http://sitename.com/drupal/sites/all folder, there you will see a readme.txt file. This file will clearly tell you the trick.
You just need to create a new folder named modules here. Now copy the modules folder here. That’s all, you have successfully installed the module.
Next step would be to enable the module through the Admin interface. To do this navigate to Administer Site Building Modules. Here you will see a list off all installed modules, and our newly installed module will also be listed here.
You just have to check the enable check box against the new module and then click the Save Configuration button. That’s all.
28) How can I install a new theme in Drupal?
This is another common question among Drupal newbies all time. After trying out all available themes under Drupals theme directory, we may naturally want to try new themes. Installing a new theme is very simple and straightforward.
Follow the steps below.
Download a new theme package. Note that themes for different Drupal versions are not compatible, version 5.x themes do not work with Drupal 6.x and reverse.
Read any README or INSTALL files in the package to find out if there are any special steps needed for this theme.
Upload the contents of the theme package to a new directory in the themes directory in your Drupal site. In Drupal 5.x & 6.x, you place your themes in /sites/all/themes/yourThemeName
Click administer themes and enable the new theme (Drupal will auto-detect its presence).
Edit your user preferences and select the new theme. If you want it to be the default theme for all users, check the default box in the themes administration page.
29) How to make my Drupal site offline to public, while it is under construction?
You can set your Drupal site in off-line mode, while it is being developed. Just click Administer Site maintenance. There you can set the status to off-line. If you wants, you can also set your own custom off-line message.
When set to Off-line, only users with the administer site configuration permission will be able to access your site to perform maintenance; all other visitors will see the site off-line message configured there. Authorized users can log in during Off-line mode directly via the user login page.
30) How does caching work in Drupal?
One of the common (mostly unfounded) complaints about Drupal has been, “Drupal is slow.” You want to hire a developer who understands Drupal’s built in caching system, and what its limitations are. For example, Drupal 6’s block cache will not appreciably speed up the page if the user is logged in.
Ask your candidate to recommend some additional solutions to speed up Drupal’s caching. These could include the Boost module, Varnish, Squid, Memcache or Pressflow. Ask if they’ve ever run into issues with Drupal’s cache.
31) Can you please explain the difference between Core and Contrib in Drupal?
The standard release of Drupal, known as Drupal core, contains basic features common to content management systems. These include user account registration and maintenance, menu management, RSS-feeds, page layout customization, and system administration.
The Drupal core installation can be used as a brochureware website, a single- or multi-user blog, an Internet forum, or a community website providing for user-generated content.
As of August 2011 there are more than 11,000 free community-contributed addons, known as contrib modules, available to alter and extend Drupal’s core capabilities and add new features or customize Drupal’s behavior and appearance. Because of this plug-in extensibility and modular design, Drupal is sometimes described as a content management framework.
Drupal is also described as a web application framework, as it meets the generally accepted feature requirements for such frameworks.
32) What are System requirements for Drupal?
A minimum base installation requires at least 3MB of disk space but you should assume that your actual disk space will be somewhat higher. For example, if you install many contributed modules and contributed themes, the actual disk space for your installation could easily be 40 MB or more (exclusive of database content, media, backups and other files).
33) Why ca not A Drupal user edit a node they created?
Symptoms: An authorized Drupal user loses “edit” access to nodes they’ve created, even if they have appropriate node (or other module) access permissions. Or, user cannot edit a node that should be editable by them, based on access control or node access settings. No errors or warnings are presented to the user. Nothing in the Drupal watchdog log.
Possible Cause: The user does not have permission to use the input filter currently assigned to the node. (An administrator or other privileged user may have changed the input filter settings, or, input filter permissions may have been changed to exclude the node author since the node was created. As a result, the user never had, or no longer has permission to use the input filter associated with the node.)
34) How Does Drupal Compare to Ruby on Rails?
Another common alternative platform to Drupal is Ruby on Rails. We really don’t have much to say about Ruby except that it is a framework moreso than a platform. There are some characteristically challenging web development tasks that are quite easy to do with Ruby, and there are others which are infinitely more complicated than they should be.
One big difference is the fact that Ruby lacks the refined data object model found in Drupal that ensures interoperability between various aspects of the system, such as adding new modules to modify the operations of others.
Whereas Drupal offers a self-generating database schema for many modules and underlying components of the platform, Ruby on Rails emphasizes a design philosophy holding that simplification of code conventions leads to better outcomes.
While this all sounds good in principle, we have found there are certain tasks that make adherance to this philosophy an ideal moreso than a practical goal and breaking free from these conventions when necessary a daunting task (especially when integrating with external systems).
35) How Does Drupal Compare to Other Open Source CMS Systems?
Drupal is also often compared with other open source content management systems including Joomla, Plone, Scoop, Silverstripe, Typo3, Graffitti, Moveable Type and WordPress.
There are characteristic features to all of these systems that make them appropriate in certain contexts, and most of them compare favorably to Drupal in one category of operation or another.
Few of them, however, are capable of offering the balance between performance and functionality found in Drupal.
36) How Does Drupal Compare to Commercial CMS Systems?
Drupal is often compared to a number of commercial content management systems including Crown Peak, Expression Engine, Clickability and Site Life in terms of capabilities.
None of these systems offer the range of features that can be found in Drupal or the flexible, developer-friendly architecture that allows us to rapidly deploy dynamic web sites. In terms of sustainability, these platforms charactertistically lack the innovative approach to development embraced by the Drupal community, with updates and new features continually being added to the platform.
These systems typically do surpass Drupal in terms of out-of-the-box reporting and metrics tools, generally providing views of data that is also stored in other systems.
For instance, detailed page tracking information can just as easily be pulled from a CDN and integrated into a Drupal site for much less than the costs of per-seat licenses from a commercial vendor over a 1 month period.
37) What Kind of Support Is Available?
A wide range of support services are available for organizations running Drupal sites. The Drupal community itself is an excellent resource for people looking to learn more about the platform or resolve specific issues that emerge using the system.
Acquia offers an enterprise distribution of Drupal that includes uptime monitoring, email and telephone based troubleshooting support, and subscription plans for sites with varying performance requirements.
For hosting, Our works with a variety of partners to deliver solutions to ensure sites are operational and can scale to meet changing traffic expectations. Rackspace is Our preferred hosting partner, and their 100% uptime guarantee allows us to focus on building great web sites without worrying about the network.
Workhabit and Amazon S3 offer cloud hosting solutions that allow us to build sites that automatically scale to handle large peaks of traffic, and to provision new servers dynamically based on actual traffic conditions on any given day.
38) How Does Drupal Scale?
Trellon has built Drupal sites and deployed them in very demanding scenarios, serving millions of page views a day. Drupal scalability and performance optimization is one of our core competencies, and we often work with existing web properties to find ways to improve their performance. Contact us to discuss your specific needs.
39) What Does Drupal Do?
Drupal is the choice for many great web sites because it does a lot of different things very well, and allows different kinds of information to interact effectively through its flexible, open architecture. Compared with commercial or custom solutions, Drupal’s feature set is far more economic and practical for most organizations.
40) Explain coding standards in Drupal?
As per the Coding standards, omit the closing ?> tag. Including the closing tag may cause strange runtime issues on certain server setups. (Note that the examples in the handbook will show the closing tag for formatting reasons only and you should not include it in your real code.)
All functions in your module that will be used by Drupal are named {modulename}_{hook}, where “hook” is a pre-defined function name suffix. Drupal will call these functions to get specific data, so having these well-defined names means Drupal knows where to look. We will come to hooks in a while.
41. What is CMS?
A content management system (CMS) is a collection of procedures used to manage work flow in a collaborative environment. These procedures can be manual or computer-based.
The procedures are designed to:
* Allow for a large number of people to contribute to and share stored data
* Control access to data, based on user roles. User roles define what information each user can view or edit
* Aid in easy storage and retrieval of data
* Reduce repetitive duplicate input
* Improve the ease of report writing
* Improve communication between users
In a CMS, data can be defined as almost anything – documents, movies, pictures, phone numbers, scientific data, etc. CMSs are frequently used for storing, controlling, revising, semantically enriching, and publishing documentation.
Content that is controlled is industry-specific. For example, entertainment content differs from the design documents for a fighter jet. There are various terms for systems (related processes) that do this. Examples are web content management, digital asset management, digital records management and electronic content management.
Synchronization of intermediate steps, and collation into a final product are common goals of each.
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42. Source Code
The program must include source code, and must allow distribution in source code as well as compiled form. Where some form of a product is not distributed with source code, there must be a well-publicized means of obtaining the source code for no more than a reasonable reproduction cost preferably, downloading via the Internet without charge.
The source code must be the preferred form in which a programmer would modify the program. Deliberately obfuscated source code is not allowed. Intermediate forms such as the output of a preprocessor or translator are not allowed.
43. Derived Works
The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software.
44. Integrity of The Author’s Source Code
The license may restrict source-code from being distributed in modified form only if the license allows the distribution of “patch files” with the source code for the purpose of modifying the program at build time. The license must explicitly permit distribution of software built from modified source code.
The license may require derived works to carry a different name or version number from the original software.
45. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups
The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons.
46. What are GNU Licenses ?
Does free software mean using the GPL?
Not at all—there are many other free software licenses. We have an incomplete list. Any license that provides the user certain specific freedoms is a free software license.
47. Why are so many Drupal versions available – 4.x, 5.x …? Which one should I use?
It is recommended that you run the most current stable release. This can always be found at the Drupal Project page. However, if there are no compelling features in the latest version, a contrib module that is important to you isn’t ready or you don’t have time, there is no need to rush your upgrade as long as security updates are available for the version you are running.
48. Can I use Drupal on the command line?
Yes, you can use drush –
drush is a command line shell and Unix scripting interface for Drupal
49. What are hooks in Drupal ?
Allow modules to interact with the Drupal core.
Drupal’s module system is based on the concept of “hooks”. A hook is a PHP function that is named foo_bar(), where “foo” is the name of the module (whose filename is thus foo.module) and “bar” is the name of the hook. Each hook has a defined set of parameters and a specified result type.
To extend Drupal, a module need simply implement a hook. When Drupal wishes to allow intervention from modules, it determines which modules implement a hook and calls that hook in all enabled modules that implement it.
50. what is Database abstraction layer in Drupal ?
Allow the use of different database servers using the same code base.
Drupal provides a slim database abstraction layer to provide developers with the ability to support multiple database servers easily.
The intent of this layer is to preserve the syntax and power of SQL as much as possible, while letting Drupal control the pieces of queries that need to be written differently for different servers and provide basic security checks.
Most Drupal database queries are performed by a call to db_query() or db_query_range(). Module authors should also consider using pager_query() for queries that return results that need to be presented on multiple pages, and tablesort_sql() for generating appropriate queries for sortable tables.
51. Explain the menu system in Drupal ? Purpose of menus ?
Define the navigation menus, and route page requests to code based on URLs.
The Drupal menu system drives both the navigation system from a user perspective and the callback system that Drupal uses to respond to URLs passed from the browser. For this reason, a good understanding of the menu system is fundamental to the creation of complex modules.
Drupal’s menu system follows a simple hierarchy defined by paths. Implementations of hook_menu() define menu items and assign them to paths (which should be unique). The menu system aggregates these items and determines the menu hierarchy from the paths. For example, if the paths defined were a, a/b, e, a/b/c/d, f/g, and a/b/h, the menu system would form the structure:
a
a/b
a/b/c/d
a/b/h
e
f/g
Note that the number of elements in the path does not necessarily determine the depth of the menu item in the tree.
When responding to a page request, the menu system looks to see if the path requested by the browser is registered as a menu item with a callback.
If not, the system searches up the menu tree for the most complete match with a callback it can find. If the path a/b/i is requested in the tree above, the callback for a/b would be used.
The found callback function is called with any arguments specified in the “page arguments” attribute of its menu item. The attribute must be an array. After these arguments, any remaining components of the path are appended as further arguments.
In this way, the callback for a/b above could respond to a request for a/b/i differently than a request for a/b/j.
For an illustration of this process, see page_example.module.
Access to the callback functions is also protected by the menu system. The “access callback” with an optional “access arguments” of each menu item is called before the page callback proceeds. If this returns TRUE, then access is granted; if FALSE, then access is denied. Menu items may omit this attribute to use the value provided by an ancestor item.
In the default Drupal interface, you will notice many links rendered as tabs. These are known in the menu system as “local tasks”, and they are rendered as tabs by default, though other presentations are possible. Local tasks function just as other menu items in most respects. It is convention that the names of these tasks should be short verbs if possible.
In addition, a “default” local task should be provided for each set. When visiting a local task’s parent menu item, the default local task will be rendered as if it is selected; this provides for a normal tab user experience. This default task is special in that it links not to its provided path, but to its parent item’s path instead.
The default task’s path is only used to place it appropriately in the menu hierarchy.
Everything described so far is stored in the menu_router table.
The menu_links table holds the visible menu links. By default these are derived from the same hook_menu definitions, however you are free to add more with menu_link_save().
52. How to interact with Drupal search system ?
There are three ways to interact with the search system:
Specifically for searching nodes, you can implement nodeapi(‘update index’) and nodeapi(‘search result’). However, note that the search system already indexes all visible output of a node, i.e. everything displayed normally by hook_view() and hook_nodeapi(‘view’).
This is usually sufficient. You should only use this mechanism if you want additional, non-visible data to be indexed.
Implement hook_search(). This will create a search tab for your module on the /search page with a simple keyword search form. You may optionally implement hook_search_item() to customize the display of your results.
Implement hook_update_index(). This allows your module to use Drupal’s HTML indexing mechanism for searching full text efficiently.
If your module needs to provide a more complicated search form, then you need to implement it yourself without hook_search(). In that case, you should define it as a local task (tab) under the /search page (e.g. /search/mymodule) so that users can easily find it.
53. What is a Module in drupal ?
A module is software (code) that extends Drupal features and/or functionality. Core modules are those included with the main download of Drupal, and you can turn on their functionality without installing additional software.
Contributed modules are downloaded from the Modules download section of drupal.org, and installed within your Drupal installation. You can also create your own modules; this requires a thorough understanding of Drupal, PHP programming, and Drupal’s module API.
54. Explain User, Permission, Role in drupal.
Every visitor to your site, whether they have an account and log in or visit the site anonymously, is considered a user to Drupal. Each user has a numeric user ID, and non-anonymous users also have a user name and an email address.
Other information can also be associated with users by modules; for instance, if you use the core Profile module, you can define user profile fields to be associated with each user.
Anonymous users have a user ID of zero (0). The user with user ID one (1), which is the user account you create when you install Drupal, is special: that user has permission to do absolutely eveything on the site.
Other users on your site can be assigned permissions via roles. To do this, you first need to create a role, which you might call “Content editor” or “Member”. Next, you will assign permissions to that role, to tell Drupal what that role can and can’t do on the site.
Finally, you will grant certain users on your site your new role, which will mean that when those users are logged in, Drupal will let them do the actions you gave that role permission to do.
You can also assign permissions for the special built-in roles of “anonymous user” (a user who is not logged in) and “authenticated user” (a user who is logged in, with no special role assignments). Drupal permissions are quite flexible — you are allowed to assign permission for any task to any role, depending on the needs of your site.
55. Explain the concept of node in drupal.
A node in Drupal is the generic term for a piece of content on your web site. (Note that the choice of the word “node” is not meant in the mathematical sense as part of a network.) Some examples of nodes:
• Pages in books
• Discussion topics in forums
• Entries in blogs
• News article stories
Each node on your site has a Content Type. It also has a Node ID, a Title, a creation date, an author (a user on the site), a Body (which may be ignored/omitted for some content types), and some other properties.
By using modules such as the contributed Content Construction Kit (CCK) module, the core Taxonomy module, and the contributed Location module, you can add fields and other properties to your nodes.
56. Concept of Comment in Drupal .
Comments are another type of content you can have on your site (if you have enabled the core Comment module). Each comment is a typically small piece of content that a user submits, attached to a particular node.
For example, each piece of discussion attached to a particular forum topic node is a comment.
57 explain Taxonomy in drupal .
Drupal has a system for classifying content, which is known as taxonomy and implemented in the core Taxonomy module. You can define your own vocabularies (groups of taxonomy terms), and add terms to each vocabulary.
Vocabularies can be flat or hierarchical, can allow single or multiple selection, and can also be “free tagging” (meaning that when creating or editing content, you can add new terms on the fly).
Each vocabulary can then be attached to one or more content types, and in this way, nodes on your site can be grouped into categories, tagged, or classified in any way you choose.
58 . How database system of drupal works ?
Drupal stores information in a database; each type of information has its own database table. For instance, the basic information about the nodes of your site are stored in the Node table, and if you use the CCK module to add fields to your nodes, the field information is stored in separate tables.
Comments and Users also have their own database tables, and roles, permissions, and other settings are also stored in database tables.
59. Explain the path system of drupal ?
When you visit a URL within your Drupal site, the part of the URL after your base site address is known as the path. When you visit a path in your Drupal site, Drupal figures out what information should be sent to your browser, via one or more database queries.
Generally, Drupal allows each module you have enabled on your site to define paths that the module will be responsible for, and when you choose to visit a particular path, Drupal asks the module what should be displayed on the page.
For instance, this site (drupal.org) is (of course) built with Drupal. The page you are now viewing is http://drupal.org/node/19828, whose path is “node/19828?. The module that is responsible for this path is the core Node module, so when you visit this page, Drupal lets the Node module determine what to display.
To determine the path to a particular page on your site, for purposes of creating a link, go to the page you want to link to and look at the URL in the address bar. By default the URL, after the base address of your site, will begin with ‘?q=’. When ‘Clean URLs’ are enabled you will see a directory structure in the URL. The “path” for use in a menu item is the part of the URL after the site’s base address and without the “?q=”.
60. Explain Region, Block, Menu in drupal ..
Pages on your Drupal site are laid out in regions, which can include the header, footer, sidebars, and main content section; your theme may define additional regions. Blocks are discrete chunks of information that are displayed in the regions of your site’s pages.
Blocks can take the form of menus (which are concerned with site navigation), the output from modules (e.g., hot forum topics), or dynamic and static chunks of information that you’ve created yourself (e.g., a list of upcoming events).
There are three standard menus in Drupal: Primary Links, Secondary Links, and Navigation. Primary and Secondary links are built by site administrators, and displayed automatically in the page header of many themes (if not, you can enable their blocks to display them).
Navigation is the catch-all menu that contains your administration menus, as well as links supplied by modules on your site. You can also create your own custom menus, and display them by enabling their blocks.
You can customise menus in several ways, such as reordering menu items by setting their “weight” or simply dragging into place, renaming menu items, and changing the link title (the tooltip that appears when you mouse over a menu item). You can move a menu item into a different menu by editing the Parent property of the menu item.
You can also add custom menu items to a menu, from the Add menu item tab of the Menu administration screen. To create a menu item, you will need to provide the path to the content (see above).
In all cases a menu item will only be shown to a visitor if they have the rights to view the page it links to; e.g., the admin menu item is not shown to visitors who are not logged in.
Preparing for a Drupal interview requires a solid understanding of Drupal’s key concepts, features, and best practices. By familiarizing yourself with the commonly asked interview questions and their answers, you can demonstrate your expertise and increase your chances of landing your dream Drupal job.
Remember to practice hands-on coding, explore real-world Drupal projects, and stay updated with the latest Drupal developments to enhance your overall proficiency in Drupal web development. Good luck with your Drupal interview questions!
By being prepared and answering Drupal interview questions in a positive and enthusiastic way, you can increase your chances of acing your next Drupal interview.
I hope these Drupal interview questions helps you for interview.