I had a chance to experience a beta version of the upcoming D8 certification from Acquia. “D8 Foundation” - to be more precise. Thanks to the Learning Services team at Acquia for allowing me to take the exam pre-release.
The score is not something I can be proud of. Although it was way higher than what I was expecting it to be. The exam blue print is not published yet. Prior to the exam, I had a chance to look at a draft of the blue print. It isn’t much detailed yet, like the blueprint we have for the Acquia Certified Developer exam. So, it wasn’t much of a help for preparing for the certification.
My exposure to D8 has been limited so far. I had ported a couple of modules (simple_fb_connect and FBIP). Built a couple of very small POCs / pet projects on D8 earlier.
Like the earlier ones, the exam had questions across all the 3 categories - Site Building, Theming and Module Development.
If you are someone who has cleared the Acquia Certified Developer Certification exam, and just diving into Drupal, you will find this exam easy to clear with basic understanding of OOP and Drupal 8.
Site Building:
This is the section where Drupal 8 is most similar to Drupal 7. That makes it a very easy section to score even to those who are brand new to Drupal. A few things have changed from D7 to D8 in terms of site building. If you are already a pro in D7 site building, Chris Shattuck’s Upgrading to Drupal 8 video course (About 1h) will help you bridge the small gap that exists between D7 and D8 site building.
Some significant changes in this section between D7 and D8 that you might want to take a loot at would include:
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Manage Fields, Manage Form Display, Manage Display on content types
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Managing comment configuration on content types, Comment types, Comment Forms
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Form Modes
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Block System (Completely revamped in D8)
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https://drupalize.me/blog/201403/block-system-finally-useful-drupal-8
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https://www.drupal.org/developing/api/8/block_api (More of Mod Dev than Site Building though)
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HTML 5 Input types
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New Multilingual support in core Or This link if you have even more time.
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New folder structure (Although this can’t be categorised as Site Building completely)
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Form Builder / Contact Forms
Views in core in D8 remains very identical to D7 views. Questions on views would be an easy win if you are familiar with D7 views.
Module Development:
Module Development definitely has changed a lot from D7 to D8. Although not as much as Theming. Assuming you are already a D7 Module developer, I am trying to jot down below a few items that I believe will help D8 module development better and score in this section.
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A practical guide to building basic Drupal 8 modules => There is a bunch of documentation available on the above pages’ sidebar under these pages. Skimming through all of them should give you a fair idea.
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The exam does test you on basic Object Oriented Programming Concepts. Drupal.org has a nice collection of links on https://www.drupal.org/getting-started-d8-bkg-prereq to get you started if you are new to OOP.
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On the same link, also check out the resources under
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Namespaces
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Services and Dependency Injection
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OOP Conventions @ https://api.drupal.org/api/drupal/core%21core.api.php/group/oo_conventions/8
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While that might suffice for the test, I would also recommend going through all the chapters of the book Building Drupal 8 Modules by Thomas Howell.
Theming:
Theming is definitely a section that has seen the largest change between D7 and D8.
Read about Twig in D8.
A good place to start would be Comparison of PHPTemplate and Twig theming paradigms. Adding regions to themes, Adding assets, the Classy theme, Creating sub-themes are some more items that you could check further on.
That should cover just enough to have you covered for the “Foundation” exam. Although I would recommend reading further and taking a deeper dive into D8 theming as below.
The D8 theming guide on drupal.org is a good read, covering the below sections.
The exam should be an easy one to crack. Leverage the fact that D8 has lot of stuff common to D7, especially in Site Building. That could save your ass. It saved mine.
The exam is expected to be publicly available by Jan 15th 2016.
If you are brand new to D8, consider developing a small hello world module and a basic theme from scratch in D8 before you consider taking up the exam. All the very best!!