Pokémon
Not only did I gain some street cred with my kids, but I also gained some really great experience with Drupal 8, early in it’s lifecycle.
This project was a 1 to 1 port from another CMS. I was brought in to help get things done while another agency managed the project. I was responsible for building things backend and frontend, as well as helping the other team learn the ways of Drupal.
Highlights
Drupal 8
The jump from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8 brought a change from functional programming to Symfony and OOP. I’ve been familiar with Object Oriented Programming for a long time with C++. I had been studying Drupal 8 and was looking forward to a fresh build with a new framework.
Complex Data Structures
Pokemon.com is very complex, with familiar marketing and information style content but also the Pokédex, a huge index of every Pokémon ever. The Pokédex is a complex data structure with connections between Pokémon evolutions, types, stats, weaknesses, and more. This was a great opportunity to learn about the new Entity API and how to use it effectively.
Additionally I learned about services and the new theming system. It was just a fun project to work on.
Migration
As this was a port from another CMS, with a lot of data to manage, Migration was a big part of the project. I dove head first into the new Migration API and learned how to use it effectively. I built some custom migration plugins to handle some requirements and helped the other team learn what I knew about it.