Book Review: Drupal 7 First Look

The same week that Drupal 7 hit release candidate status, I was given the opportunity to review the new book from Packt Publishing: Drupal 7 First Look. To say I was excited would be an understatement. For months now I have been downloading and testing D7 on a near -daily basis, but to actually hold in my hands an official book for D7 makes an imminent stable release seem that much more real and tangible. It finally feels like we're near the finish line, and I can't wait to start using D7 for my day job (even though I have been using it for personal projects for some time now). It's even more exciting now that an actual stable release date has been announced and release parties are being planned all over the globe. Well, enough gushing for now, let's see how this book is.

Drupal 7 First Look is written by Mark Noble, owner and operator of Turning Leaf Tech, and he is no stranger to Drupal. He is also the author of another Packt book: Drupal 6 Site Builder Solutions, and runs the website: http://drupalbyexample.com.

Mark's latest offering is a concise, yet thorough, overview of D7's new features and updates that also includes a bit of information on what you need to know when upgrading your D6 site to D7. Each chapter in the book covers a specific Drupal topic, such as site building, development, administration, theming, and databases and each chapter goes into detail on what has changed since D6, what has been added, and what has been removed. This book is almost like a heavily annotated changelog for D7, which suffice to say, is a boon for those of us who will need a quick goto reference to figure out what is different about whatever D7 component we may be dealing with, whether that be the Form API, fields, themes, or administration.

Drupal 7 First Look is for anyone that will be involved with building D7 sites. Site architects, themers, admins, and developers alike all have a great, quick, go-to reference available to them through this book. This book makes little assumptions about the reader's familiarity with Drupal. It is NOT a tutorial or how-to book, though the beginning chapters do provide an overview of how to perform some of the new administrative tasks. Nor is this book a developer or themer's guide. You won't see much code in this book, but nevertheless, developers and themers alike can make good use of having this book in their arsenal when they begin tackling D7 projects.

Being a module developer, obviously the most useful section for me was the Drupal 7 for Developers chapter. The chapter briefly describes each hook that has changed, which hooks have been added, and which hooks have been removed with short annotations on each one. I've historically just jumped to the online API documentation or the handbooks for this sort of thing in the past, which pretty much contains the same information, but it is very nice to have a printed copy that I can hold in my hands and take with me. I'm a hands-on, visual learner who greatly enjoys thumbing through reference materials when I'm heads down in a project, and I've already dog-eared this chapter in the book as I know I will be frequenting it in the very near future.

In conclusion, I recommend this book to anyone that will soon find themselves working on D7 projects, especially those who have been working on D6 sites for years now. You'll find that with this book at your side, it won't take you long to get up to speed on all that has changed from D6 to D7, and you'll probably save yourself some hair-pulling when you find yourself wondering where something has disappeared to, or why something doesn't work like it "used to". Like I said before, this book is not a novice's how-to guide, nor is it an advanced development manual. Drupal 7 First Look is a well-structured, thorough reference written for everyone. Thanks and kudos go out Mark Noble on his latest contribution to Drupal's ever-growing library of quality publications. 

Download a sample chapter for Drupal 7 First Look

Purchase Drupal 7 First Look from Packt