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Anthropologist Kasey Qynn Dolin noted, of our societal moment that COVID-19 has thrown into sharp relief:

We expected going online would lead to mass democratization and access to information that empowers large groups of people.

Instead, we got outsourced.

Online connectivity gave people who own means of production the ability to outsource work in a way that offloads expenses— the cost of the things which generate the conditions for the wealthy and powerful to profit in the first place. Some of this, like shifting the expenses of maintaining fleets of vehicles off of a corporation's balance sheet, have been celebrated as technology-enabled innovations in business models. This is usually a big charade, a technological gloss on what is just another, relatively minor, attempt to concentrate wealth and power. Meanwhile, the biggest return on capital and the biggest harmful effects on people come from practices that business media don't focus on.

The world going online has helped the owning class shift the costs of workers simply living (health care, child care, retirement, sustenance or more-than-sustenance wages) onto people, communities, and whole nations less able to hold global corporations to account.

There are a couple big reasons this happened.

First, technology is not neutral, and it tends to serve the needs of those who shape it.

Even with the incredible historical happenstance of US military money flowing to academic researchers who developed and incubated an Internet that was computer-to-computer rather than hierarchical…

…and even with the impressive tradition of technologists making decisions openly and favoring adopting standards by rough consensus that allow unaffiliated parts to work with one another…

…the services built on the Web and other Internet-based protocols and standards reflect the desire for control (for wealth and for power) held by corporations, governments, and venture capitalists— because these are the entities that have been spending the money and increasingly calling the shots for the past twenty years.

Second, the same reason a miracle was required to make the Internet distributed in the first place has worked against many of the technologies built on the Internet being peer-to-peer— it is hard to come to agreement on protocols and hard to make them easy to use. It is easier to build software and services which are ultimately within one organization's control, and the organizations with the resources to do even this have tended to be the same ones centralizing power (with notable exceptions such as Wikipedia and the Internet Archive).

Similarly to networked computers, in the world of organized humans it is very hard to develop ways to build shared power. It is much easier to use communications technology to move work and consequences farther from those who already hold centralized power.

However, these facts working against us don't mean we have to take our struggle for our human rights and for justice entirely offline. And struggle we must, because the people who hold wealth and power now are seeing, in this health and economic crisis, just how much can be denied us without threatening their wealth and power.

A lot of the technology developed for business as usual, even the proprietary stuff we don't actually control like Slack and Google Docs, can be put to use by movements for justice and liberty. There are a lot of similarities in tools people need in order to work together, whether in companies or in community groups. That is not to say that the movement to build truly free as in freedom alternatives to these is not good and important. Indeed, the development of free libre open source software is downright great and vital when led by or done in direct collaboration with groups marginalized by capitalism that do have different needs, such as a threat model that must take into account government repression and fascist threats.

But we need to concentrate our finite time on building technology corporate and political masters would never want built.

We need to focus on that which builds shared power. We need to build ways to share power.

Power is organization. People organized in large groups can hold even global corporations to account. We can replace existing structures, as proves needed, to gain the sustenance needed for life; to gain the justice of a common share of all that nature has given and all that humanity has worked for; and to gain the freedom to do what we choose with it all.

Any group with that level of power is unlikely to keep true to universal human rights and and all the rest unless power stays distributed within it— ideally throughout all society.

Formal democracy, however flawed or perfected, has never been enough and will never be enough.

We need ways of communicating and making decisions that work well and keep power distributed.

Sharing the power which is inherent in controlling communication and in making decisions requires sharing the work of both.

There's endless creativity required in getting people to see a better world is possible, and infinite strategy needed to achieve it. Thinking about how to share power while building power is necessary, but it is too much to have to figure out from scratch while doing everything else. It is as unrealistic to expect every group of people who give a damn to craft tech for mass democracy and distributed power as it is to expect every group of people to make their own word processing and web publishing software.

Which is why we need to build online tools for sharing the power that we achieve by organizing.

One indispensable piece, unsolved in practice but in theory solvable technically, is distributing the power of coordinated messaging. Coordinated messaging, in turn, is the root of both collective decision-making and coordinating action.

We need to build up this power to coordinate and communicate while being confident we will be able to use this power collectively. Here is a way that could work:

A person who is part of a movement has a piece of information they think every person in the movement should know, or that they think should be spread as widely as possible to the public. They have to go through some process that is the same for everybody, such as getting any two people in the movement to approve the content and crafting of the message. Then the proposed communication goes not to a standing committee but to a small group of people randomly drawn from the movement and asked to decide if it's something everybody should see now, or not.

That's the technology I want to build to make us all going online finally lead to mass democratization and power for all people over their own lives.

Join me.

The Global Training Days is an initiative coordinated by the Drupal Association to introduce new people to the wonderful world of Drupal. The initiative is about providing free or low-cost training to facilitate people gaining familiarity with Drupal in just a day. Depending on the format, attendees can leave the workshop with a website already built. In this blog post, I will explain how to organize one and share experiences and lessons learned after organizing them in Nicaragua since 2014. It is my hope to inspire you to be part of the initiative and organize a workshop in your local community.

The basics

To get started, find out the next dates when the workshops would be given worldwide. They happen two days in a row (on Friday and Saturday) approximately every 3 months. Dates are set in the last quarter of the previous year and can be checked at https://www.drupal.org/global-training-days.

For the workshop itself there are two options to choose from in terms of time and curriculum. The first is a What is Drupal? half-day workshop where attendees learn the basics of Drupal. If you go this route it is recommended to spend most of the time explaining the different Drupal concepts, and how they relate to each other in order to build a site. Hands-on instructions where each attendee builds a site can be left out due to time constraints, but it is fine to have a demo where you show how to assemble a website using Drupal.

The second option is an Intro to Drupal full-day workshop where attendees learn the basic concepts and have the opportunity to build a simple yet functional Drupal site. For this type of workshop, you can spend the first half explaining concepts and the second half building the site. Remember the introductory nature of the workshop. Do not try to cover advanced site building concepts. Stick to Drupal core and build your site using using nodes, blocks, views, and core modules like Contact. In either version of the workshop, do not go over how to build themes or modules. If you try to cover too many topics, you might not develop them all appropriately. If you really want to cover these topics, it is better to organize a follow up workshop where they could be explained with more time.

Once you decide the date and type of workshop you want to present, sign up at this page. After doing so you will get an email from the Drupal Association. You will also be added to the list of organizers.

Plan ahead

The dates for the workshops are announced way ahead of time. Be an early bird and do not leave things to the last minute. Ask yourself these questions and plan accordingly:

• Am I participating the two days (Friday and Saturday) or only one day?
• Am I presenting a half-day or a full-day workshop?
• Am I providing computers to attendees or they are required to bring a laptop?
• Am I providing lunch for attendees or they are required to bring/buy their own food?
• How many people can attend based on the facility’s capacity?
• How many people can attend based on the number of speakers?
• Does each speaker know which section of the workshop they are going to present?
• If the workshop includes building a Drupal site, which tools will I use?
• Where should I advertise the workshop?
• What is the contingency plan in case the Internet service does not work?

Before the training

It may seem obvious, but make sure you have a place with the proper conditions to give a workshop. You will need:

• a projector
• a whiteboard or chalkboard, or flipchart and markers
• a decent Internet connection
• good room lighting
• comfortable room temperature
• zero sound pollution

The last item is very important as you do not want to yell to be heard. It happened to us once that the room next to the workshop laboratory was occupied by a group of loud children. This not only distracted the attendees, but also forced me to raise my voice to be heard. After speaking loudly for a couple of hours my voice had disappeared.

Even without noise pollution, giving back-to-back trainings two days in a row poses quite a challenge to keeping your voice audible. Make sure you have multiple speakers and take turns presenting. Use a microphone if available. It helps to preserve your voice, and helps participants who might not hear very well.

Once you have the venue figured out, be realistic about how many people you can effectively manage. Organizing a workshop takes lots of effort. It is fine to try to teach as many people as possible, but quality is preferred over quantity. In our experience, teaching small groups is more effective because you can dedicate more time to answer all questions each attendee might have and provide a personalized learning experience.

Make sure you get a confirmation of the venue at least 3 weeks before the training so you have time to promote the workshop. In Nicaragua, we always make the announcement in our official Drupal group and on the community’s Twitter and Facebook accounts. But experience has shown us that only a minority of the attendees find out about the event through these channels. In our case, about 90% of attendees discovered the event after seeing an invitation posted to a non-Drupal specific Facebook group of Nicaraguan developers. The 10% remaining is a combination of word of mouth (past participants recommending the workshop to others), people I meet in various tech meetups, and the channels mentioned before.

When deciding where to advertise the workshop, find the right pond and remember to fish where the fish are. If you have some spare dollars, feel free to invest in paid social media advertisement. No matter where you decide to promote the workshop, include the following information in the announcement:

• Date and times.
• Name of venue and address.
• A photo of the building where the workshop will take place! We have experienced people being unable to find the venue. So, play it safe, be verbose with directions, and add a photo of the venue.
• Whether or not it is required to bring a laptop.
• Whether or not lunch will be provided.
• If registration is required, the url where people can register.
• A note that no previous knowledge is required and that anyone (not only tech people) can join! :-D

Prepare the tools you will use in the training. In Nicaragua, we prefer to use Patrick Drotleff‘s amazing service https://simplytest.me This allows us to focus on building the Drupal site, instead of configuring the myriad of local environments that attendees may have. In our experience, configuring local environments on each attendee’s computer takes too much time. For example, most of the participants that come to our workshops use Windows. Trying to set up a LAMP environment could be surprisingly complicated in this operating system. Even out of the box solutions like XAMPP might not be able to start the web server due to port conflicts. Skype is a recurrent culprit. Starting a MySQL server might also fail. If that happens, skip it altogether and install using SQLite. More often than not, we go the fastest route and use disposable Drupal installations. Keep in mind that you are teaching Drupal site building, not server configuration.

"Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong." Murphy’s law will manifest more often than you would like. Be prepared and have a contingency plan for as much as you can. During one of our workshops, our favorite tool https://simplytest.me was down, but we were prepared with packages for local installation. In another instance, the venue was changing Internet provider and we had no Internet at all. Again, local installations came to the rescue. In such cases, save time by asking people to work in pairs or small groups so you do not have to configure a lot of computers. Bring a copy of your slide deck in a thumb drive so you can present offline in case it is needed. In Nicaragua, not only the tech is community vibrant. Volcanoes are too! With a handful of active volcanoes that produce tremors very often, we need to make sure to have clear instructions on how to leave the facility if necessary. Do your homework and be ready in case anything goes wrong.

On the day of the training

Take with you a laptop, a VGA/DVI/HDMI cable and adapter, and a back up projector if available. Have a copy of your slide deck for offline presenting and all the tools you might need in case the Internet decides to visit Saturn. Arrive early at the venue, set up your computer and projector for the presentation, and write the wi-fi password on the board. If you are providing computers, make sure any tool you intend to use is installed and working.

Take lots of photos (with participants' permission) and share them on social media. Be sure to record the training for posterity. This is not to show off, but to inspire others to organize workshops in their local communities. Make sure to use the official #DrupalGTD hashtag when sharing content. And please respect those who might not want to appear online! In our trainings, after finishing presenting theory and before starting to build sites we ask the attendees for a group photo which we later share on Facebook and Twitter.

We drupalers are fond of freebies. We enjoy stickers, T-shirts, trial online subscriptions, or anything that comes in an event as swag, right? Let’s share this passion with attendees. In our trainings, we use to have a table with lots of stickers for people to take from. In one occasion we also gave away T-shirts. And we have gotten in contact with online education providers to give attendees free trial access to their content. Chris Shattuck from Build a Module has been so kind in offering free access to his amazing library of content for 8 days to every attendee of our workshops. He also gave us some 1-month free memberships to raffle off. And the friendly folks from Knp University provided free access to Drupal-related material to attendees of the November 2015 edition of the workshop. When organizing a workshop make sure to have some treats for your attendees and partner with education providers so they can keep learning when the day is over. Also, show attendees how to stay connected with the broader community by helping them create a drupal.org profile and teaching them how to get involved.

A final comment for this section has to do with attendance. Do not feel bad if the number of people who show up is not the same that the number of people who registered. In fact, almost every time those numbers will not match. Sometimes you will have many attendees and in other occasions only a few. Do not let this disappoint you. Remember what motivated you in the first place to organize the event. Share your knowledge with others, no matter the number of attendees. Personally, I would present any workshop or session as long as at least one person shows up. Everyone’s time is valuable and each attendee sets aside time to listen to you. That is an honor I take with great responsibility, and you should too.

After the training

After you have enjoyed the Global Training Days experience, give thanks to everyone who made the workshop possible. This includes the attendees, co-presenters, venue providers, sponsors, and educational partners. In Nicaragua we post pictures and thank-you notes on Twitter and Facebook. And in those thank-you messages we also include the next dates of the workshop for those who missed it this time.

Of utmost importance is to perform an evaluation of the workshop. Meditate on things that went well, but also on things that went wrong and can be improved. At the end of our workshops we ask for feedback from the attendees. We also take time to improve the slide deck based on the concepts that attendees had difficulty understanding. This often translates to changing the copy, images, and examples used to explain the different concepts.

After all the hard work, give yourself a pat on the back, and share your story with others. You can write a blog post like this or simply post pictures of the workshop online. The Drupal Association is also interested in feedback from you and the attendees, so do not hesitate in providing it.

My wish list

The Drupal Association provides a lot of support and material to promote these events. Unfortunately, this content is only available in English at the moment. I would love to see this content translated to every language spoken by a member of our community. In Spanish for example, there is a great community that could help with the task of translating the content. The same can be said for communities which speak other languages. Eduardo Garcia is running for Director at Large within the Drupal Association and he has interesting ideas about making our community more inclusive for non-English speaking members.

Another wish of mine is collaboration in curriculum building. When the Nicaraguan community started to participate in the Global Trainings Days initiative back in 2014, we found little content that could be used in the workshop. The Drupal Association offers a curriculum in case you need it, but it is in English and our audience speaks Spanish. Because of this, we basically had to start creating a curriculum from scratch. The curriculum we use in Nicaragua is far from perfect, but the content has improved a lot over time. This has taken a lot of time and effort, yet there is no need to repeat the process again. Because of this, we have made our content available under a Creative Commons Attribution - Non Commercial - Share Alike license for anyone to use and adapt to their needs. So far we have available both a slide deck and a video recording of the theory part of one of the workshops. Unfortunately, some videos do not have audio, but we are planning on making another recording in a future edition. Also, I have started working on a written version of the workshop. This document is in a very early stage, but I will continue adding to it as time permits. It would be great if other communities would use this documentation and provide feedback to improve it. Collaborating in building a curriculum in different languages would be amazing. If you like this idea, start working on the curriculum in a new language and promote it to get feedback from others.

Measuring success

There are various parameters that you could use to measure the success of your workshops. For example, the number of attendees and the number of people who keep engaged with the local community thereafter. In Nicaragua, we have organized 10 workshops since 2014 and over 120 people have attended. Some keep engaged, while others do not. But numbers can be cold, so we measure success in non-quantitative ways. For example, seeing people smile when they understand the basic concepts of Drupal, or viewing their excitement after being able to build a website during the training.

Sometimes, we are able to make a more significant impact on the life of attendees. For instance, we are aware of people who could land a Drupal job after attending the workshop and continuing to learn on their own. The fact that we are making an impact on their lives is our best reward. Here are two testimonials of people who got a job after attending our workshops.

Ada Hernández - Translation and code contributor:

Hello everyone. My name is Ada Hernández Acosta and I am from León, Nicaragua. Attending a Drupal workshop presented by Lucas Hedding and Mauricio Dinarte set a milestone in my professional and personal life. At the workshop I learned the basic of Drupal: nodes, taxonomies, views, modules, themes, and more. I also learned the benefits of using Drupal including its security and no cost for usage. Moreover, a worldwide community is actively working on creating new modules, themes, and security updates. After attending the workshop I developed a strong interest in Drupal and decided let Drupal take part in my life. Today I work at MTech, LLC building websites on Drupal. Now I am also a member of this great community and I am able to make contributions to modules I use on the sites I work on. Thank you very much.

Edys Meza - Code contributor:

It was my first experience in something of this nature. I had just finished college and I wanted to learn new technologies. The Global Training Days workshop was a great opportunity for this. After attending the workshop I got an overview of Drupal that helped me a lot in the future. I learned basic concepts (nodes, taxonomies, users, blocks, etc.) each with real life examples; this was intuitive and easy to understand. That day I became part of the great Drupal community. Attending the workshop changed my life. After it I kept learning in the free classes presented by MTech, LLC where I currently work and continue learning everyday. I think these workshops are what make the Drupal community grow and help improve the lives of attendees.

Final comments

Be flexible. Nothing related to the Global Training Day is set in stone. For example, if for any reason you cannot give the training on the day suggested by the Drupal Association, pick another day. It can be in the same week or the week before or after. A good reason to do this is to let yourself rest and have enough time to recover your voice between multiple workshops in the same edition of the initiative.

Community first, companies later. Although the Drupal Association primarily has invited companies to give workshops to promote themselves, growing the Drupal community and sharing your knowledge should be the focus. In Nicaragua, we started to give the training as a local community initiative. It was Drupal Nicaragua, not a company who started giving the workshop in 2014. Later, both Agaric and MTech sponsored the events and education providers partnered with us. Of course, we are very grateful to them for their ongoing support!

Keep calm and enjoy the experience. Undoubtedly there will be mistakes, particularly the first few times you organize the workshop. In Nicaragua, we have given 10 workshops so far and none has been perfect. What is important is that you learn from the mistakes and improve for the next edition. Sometimes we face many difficulties, but we are able to work through them. At the end of the workshop, you will be rewarded by the smiles of people who have learned to build a simple yet functional website in a matter of hours. :-D

This is how the Nicaraguan Drupal community organizes Global Training Days. It is my hope that after reading through you feel inspired to give a training in your local community. When you are ready to take the challenge, pour your heart into it. Upload some photos of the workshop once it is finished, and share your experience, so that the entire Drupal community can benefit from it. If you have already participated in the Global Training Days, please share your story in the comments below. Have fun!

Special thanks to Alina Mackenzie and Lizz Trudeau for their thorough reviews and suggestions to this blog post. Also to Lucas Hedding who has helped move the Nicaraguan Drupal community forward by creating documentation and organizing events. His contributions to the local community are invaluable. And thanks to the amazing BADCamp organizers for providing me financial support to attend the camp the last two years. I have learned a lot during these events and the acquired knowledge has greatly improved the curriculum used at the Global Training Days workshop. The effort that you pour into the camp and keeping it free is inspiring and greatly appreciated. Keep up the good work! :-)

Mauricio travels the world hosting Drupal trainings and presentations.

Today we will learn how to migrate content from Google Sheets into Drupal using the Migrate Google Sheets module. We will give instructions on how to publish them in JSON format to be consumed by the migration. Then, we will talk about some assumptions made by the module to allow easier plugin configurations. Finally, we will present the source plugin configuration for Google Sheets migrations. Let’s get started.

Getting the code

You can get the full code example at https://github.com/dinarcon/ud_migrations The module to enable is UD Google Sheets, Microsoft Excel, and LibreOffice Calc source migration whose machine name is ud_migrations_sheets_sources. It comes with four migrations: udm_google_sheets_source_node.yml, udm_libreoffice_calc_source_paragraph.yml, udm_microsoft_excel_source_image.yml, and udm_backup_csv_source_node.yml. The last one is a backup in case the Google Sheet is not available. To execute it you would need the Migrate Source CSV module.

You can get the Migrate Google Sheets module and its dependency using composer: composer require drupal/migrate_google_sheets:^1.0'. It depends on Migrate Plus. Installing via composer will get you both modules.  If your Drupal site is not composer-based, you can download them manually.

Understanding the example set up

This migration will reuse the same configuration from the introduction to paragraph migrations example. Refer to that article for details on the configuration. The destinations will be the same content type, paragraph type, and fields. The source will be changed in today's example, as we use it to explain Google Sheets migrations. The end result will again be nodes containing an image and a paragraph with information about someone’s favorite book. The major difference is that we are going to read from different sources. In the next article, two of the migrations will be explained. They read from Microsoft Excel and LibreOffice Calc files.

Note: You can literally swap migration sources without changing any other part of the migration.  This is a powerful feature of ETL frameworks like Drupal’s Migrate API. Although possible, the example includes slight changes to demonstrate various plugin configuration options. Also, some machine names had to be changed to avoid conflicts with other examples in the demo repository.

Migrating nodes from Google Sheets

In any migration project, understanding the source is very important. For Google Sheets, there are many details that need your attention. First, the module works on top of Migrate Plus and extends its JSON data parser. In fact, you have to publish your Google Sheet and consume it in JSON format. Second, you need to make the JSON export publicly available. Third, you must understand the JSON format provided by Google Sheets and the assumptions made by the module to configure your fields properly. Specific instructions for Google Sheets migrations will be provided. That being said, everything explained in the JSON migration example is applicable in this case too.

Publishing a Google Sheet in JSON format

Before starting the migration, you need the source from where you will extract the data. For this, create a Google Sheet document. The example will use this one:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YVJt9isPNjkUNHf3YgoTx38r04TwqRYnp1LFrik3TAk/edit#gid=0

The 1YVJt9isPNjkUNHf3YgoTx38r04TwqRYnp1LFrik3TAk value is the worksheet ID which will be used later. Once you are done creating the document, you need to publish it so it can be consumed by the Migrate API. To do this, go to the File menu and then click on Publish to the web. A modal window will appear where you can configure the export. Note that it is possible to publish the Entire document or only some of the worksheets (tabs). The example document has two: UD Example Sheet and Do not peek in here. Make sure that all the worksheets that you need are published or export the entire document. Unless multiple urls are configured, a migration can only import from one worksheet at a time. If you fetch from multiple urls they need to have homogeneous structures. When you click the Publish button, a new URL will be presented. In the example it is:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vTy2-CGzsoTBkmvYbolFh0UDWenwd9OCdel55j9Qa37g_earT1vA6y-6phC31Xkj8sTWF0o6mZTM90H/pubhtml

The previous URL will not be used. Publishing a document is a required step, but the URL that you get should be ignored. Note that you do not have to share the document. It is fine that the document is private to you as long as it is published. It is up to you if you want to make it available to Anyone with the link or Public on the web and potentially grant edit or comment access. The Share setting does not affect the migration. The final step is getting the JSON representation of the document. You need to assemble a URL with the following pattern:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/feeds/list/[workbook-id]/[worksheet-index]/public/values?alt=json

Replace the [workbook-id] by worksheet ID mentioned at the beginning of this section, the one that is part of the regular document URL, not the published URL. The worksheet-index is an integer number starting that represents the order in which worksheets appear in the document. Use 1 for the first, 2 for the second, and so on. This means that changing the order of the worksheets will affect your migration. At the very least, you will have to update the path to reflect the new index. In the example migration, the UD Example Sheet worksheet will be used. It appears first in the document so worksheet index is 1. Therefore, the exported JSON will be available at the following URL:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/feeds/list/1YVJt9isPNjkUNHf3YgoTx38r04TwqRYnp1LFrik3TAk/1/public/values?alt=json

Understanding the published Google Sheet JSON export

Take a moment to read the JSON export and try to understand its structure. It contains much more data than what you need. The records to be imported can be retrieved using this XPath expression: /feed/entry. You would normally have to assign this value to the item_selector configuration of the Migrate Plus’ JSON data parser. But, because the value is the same for all Google Sheets, the module takes care of this automatically. You do not have to set that configuration in the source section. As for the data cells, have a look at the following code snippet to see how they appear on the export:

{
  "feed": {
    "entry": [
      {
        "gsx$uniqueid": {
          "$t": "1"
        },
        "gsx$name": {
          "$t": "One Uno Un"
        },
        "gsx$photo-file": {
          "$t": "P01"
        },
        "gsx$bookref": {
          "$t": "B10"
        }
      }
    ]
  }
}

Tip: Firefox includes a built-in JSON document viewer which helps a lot in understanding the structure of the document. If your browser does not include a similar tool out of the box, look for one in their extensions repository. You can also use a file formatter to pretty print the JSON output.

The following is a list of headers as they appear in the Google Sheet compared to how they appear in the JSON export:

• unique_id appears like gsx$uniqueid.
• name appears like gsx$name.
• photo-file appears like gsx$photo-file.
• Book Ref appears like gsx$bookref.

So, the header name from Google Sheet gets transformed in the JSON export. They get a prefix of gsx$ and the header name is transformed to all lowercase letters with spaces and most special characters removed. On top of this, the actual cell value, that you will eventually import, is in a $t property one level under the header name. Now, you should create a list of fields to migrate using XPath expressions as selectors. For example, for the Book Ref header, the selector would be gsx$bookref/$t. But that is not the way to configure the Google Sheets data parser. The module makes some assumptions to make the selector clearer. So, the gsx$ prefix and /$t hierarchy are assumed. For the selector, you only need to use the transformed name. In this case: uniqueid, name, photo-file, and bookref.

Configuring the Migrate Google Sheets source plugin

With the JSON export of the Google Sheet and the list of transformed header names, you can proceed to configure the plugin. It will be very similar to configuring a remote JSON migration. The following code snippet shows source configuration for the node migration:

source:
  plugin: url
  data_fetcher_plugin: http
  data_parser_plugin: google_sheets
  urls: 'http://spreadsheets.google.com/feeds/list/1YVJt9isPNjkUNHf3YgoTx38r04TwqRYnp1LFrik3TAk/1/public/values?alt=json'
  fields:
    - name: src_unique_id
      label: 'Unique ID'
      selector: uniqueid
    - name: src_name
      label: 'Name'
      selector: name
    - name: src_photo_file
      label: 'Photo ID'
      selector: photo-file
    - name: src_book_ref
      label: 'Book paragraph ID'
      selector: bookref
  ids:
    src_unique_id:
      type: integer

You use the url plugin, the http fetcher, and the google_sheets parser. The latter is provided by the module. The urls configuration is set to the exported JSON link. The item_selector is not configured because the /feed/entry value is assumed. The fields are configured as in the JSON migration with the caveat of using the transformed header values for the selector. Finally, you need to set the ids key to a combination of fields that uniquely identify each record.

The rest of the migration is almost identical to the JSON example. Small changes were made to prevent machine name conflicts with other examples in the demo repository. For reference, the following snippet shows part of the process, destination, and dependencies section for the Google Sheets migration.

process:
  field_ud_image/target_id:
    plugin: migration_lookup
    migration: udm_microsoft_excel_source_image
    source: src_photo_file
destination:
  plugin: 'entity:node'
  default_bundle: ud_paragraphs
migration_dependencies:
  required:
    - udm_microsoft_excel_source_image
    - udm_libreoffice_calc_source_paragraph
  optional: []

Note that the node migration depends on an image and paragraph migration. They are already available in the example. One uses a Microsoft Excel file as the source while the other a LibreOffice Calc document. Both of these migrations will be explained in the next article. Refer to this entry to know how to run migrations that depend on others. For example, you can run: drush migrate:import --tag='UD Sheets Source'.

What did you learn in today’s blog post? Have you migrated from Google Sheets before? If so, what challenges have you found? Did you know the procedure to export a sheet in JSON format? Did you know that the Migrate Google Sheets module is an extension of Migrate Plus? Share your answers in the comments. Also, I would be grateful if you shared this blog post with others.

Next: Migrating Microsoft Excel and LibreOffice Calc files into Drupal

This blog post series, cross-posted at UnderstandDrupal.com as well as here on Agaric.coop, is made possible thanks to these generous sponsors. Contact Understand Drupal if your organization would like to support this documentation project, whether it is the migration series or other topics.

While working on making a module compatible with Drupal 9 I found that the module was using an obsolete function that had been replaced with a new service. It was something like this:

/**
 * My plugin.
 *
 * @SearchPlugin(
 *   id = "my_plugin",
 *   title = @Translation("My plugin")
 * )
 */
class MyPluginSearch extends SearchPluginBase implements AccessibleInterface, SearchIndexingInterface {

  /**
   * {@inheritdoc}
   */
  public static function create(
    ContainerInterface $container,
    array $configuration,
    $plugin_id,
    $plugin_definition
  ) {
    return new static(
      $configuration,
      $plugin_id,
      $plugin_definition
    );
  }

  /** ... **/
  public function indexClear() {
    search_index_clear($this->getPluginId());
  }
}

The function search_index_clear is now part of the new search.index service that was added in Drupal 8.8. In order to keep this working on Drupal 8.8+ and Drupal 9 we need to inject the service in the create function. But if we do this unconditionally, we will get an error in Drupal 8.7 because that service was added on 8.8. What to do then?

Fortunately years ago I read an article that addressed a similar need. It talked about how to safely extends Drupal 8 plugin classes without fear of constructor changes. In my case I didn't want to change the constructor, so as to keep it compatible with Drupal 8.7 and below. At the same time, I wanted to inject the new service to use it in Drupal 8.8+ and Drupal 9. I just modified a bit my code to something like this:

/**
 * My plugin.
 *
 * @SearchPlugin(
 *   id = "my_plugin",
 *   title = @Translation("My plugin")
 * )
 */
class MyPluginSearch extends SearchPluginBase implements AccessibleInterface, SearchIndexingInterface {

  /** ... */
  protected $searchIndex;

  /**
   * {@inheritdoc}
   */
  public static function create(
    ContainerInterface $container,
    array $configuration,
    $plugin_id,
    $plugin_definition
  ) {
    $instance =  new static(
      $configuration,
      $plugin_id,
      $plugin_definition
    );

    // Only inject the service in Drupal 8.8 or newer.
    if (floatval(\Drupal::VERSION) >= 8.8) {
      $instance->searchIndex = $container->get('search.index');
    }

    return $instance;
  }

  /** ... **/
  public function indexClear() {
    if (floatval(\Drupal::VERSION) >= 8.8) {
      $this->searchIndex->clear($this->getPluginId());
    }
    else {
      search_index_clear($this->getPluginId());
    }
  }
}

And that's it, Drupal 8.8 and newer will take advantage of the new service while we keep this compatible with Drupal 8.7. This will give users more time to upgrade to Drupal 8.8+ or Drupal 9.

It's great to be here, and there, and there.

Thanks Indieweb module for Drupal!

Yes it's true, for the past few months we've been hard at work with a lot of other co-authors on The Definitive Guide to Drupal 7.

The Definitive Guide to Drupal 7 accelerates people along the Drupal learning curve by covering all aspects of building web sites with Drupal: architecture and configuration; module development; front end development; running projects sustainably; participating in the community; and contributing to Drupal's code and documentation.

Check out the website today! http://definitivedrupal.org/

Agaric is grateful to the Drupal community for all the effort poured into the amazing collaborative project. As part of giving back to it, we go to conferences to share with others what we have learned. These are some events where Agaric will be presenting this month.

Eastern Conference for Workplace Democracy

This is a convergence of worker-owned cooperatives. Representatives come from all over the country to attend workshops and sessions on all things related to owning a cooperative. It will be help in New York City on weekend of June 9th -11th at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Benjamin and Micky will be hosting a workshop/discussion with Danny Spitzberg on Drutopia. They will cover how it can help cooperatives and smaller businesses have a we presence above and beyond the costs they can afford by consolidating the hosting and feature development into a group effort.

Montreal Drupal Camp

This event will take place on June 15-18 at John Molson School of Business de l'Université Concordia. Benjamin will be speaking on how Software as a Service can lead to long-term success in a software project.

Twin Cities Drupal Camp in Minneapolis

At Twin Cities Agaric will be presenting one workshop and two sessions.

On Thursday, June 22, Benjamin and Mauricio will be presenting the Getting Started with Drupal workshop. It is aimed to people who are just starting with Drupal and want to have a birds eye view of how the system works. As part of the workshop attendees will have the chance to create a simple yet functional website to put in practice their new knowledge. The organizers have gone above and beyond to make this training FREE for everyone! You do not even need a camp ticket to participate. You just need to register.

On Saturday, June 24, Mauricio will be presenting on Drupal 8 Twig recipes. This will be an overview of the theme system in Drupal 8 and will include practical example of modifying the default markup to your needs. The same day, Benjamin will present his Software as a Service.

Design4Drupal

This is THE yearly Camp for Drupal doers in Boston and it happens June 22nd-23rd. Micky will be hosting a workshop/discussion on Drutopia, an initiative within the Drupal project based in social justice values and focused on building collectively owned online tools. Current focuses include two Drupal distributions aimed at grassroots groups also offered as software as a service, ensuring that the latest technology is accessible to low-resourced communities.
Agaric will have a busy month attending and speaking at conferences. Please come to say hi and have fun with us.

Overview

Learn to move content into Drupal 11 using the Migrate API. We will present an overview of the Extract-Transform-Load (ETL) pattern that Migrate implements. Source, process, and destination plugins will be explained to learn how each affect the migration process. By the end of the workshop, you will have a better understanding on how the migrate ecosystem works and the thought process required to plan and perform migrations. All examples will use YAML files to configure migrations. No PHP coding required.

There will be plenty of hands on examples to demonstrate different migrate concepts and how they can be used to import data into different types of fields. Time will also be allocated to answer attendee’s questions for topics not covered in the predefined material. 

Request a Private Training

Wendy is an Industrial Engineer turned web developer. She is an experienced WordPress engineer. Among her projects are online education platforms and multilingual sites. She volunteers at her local WordPress community and has presented at a couple of WordCamps.

With Europe threatening $25,000,000 fines and Facebook losing $80,000,000,000 of stock value, are you paying attention to data privacy yet? If millions and billions of dollars in news headlines never grabbed you, maybe you've noticed the dozens of e-mails from services you'd forgotten ever signing up for, declaring how much they respect your right to control your data. These e-mails are silly and possibly illegal, but they nonetheless welcome us to a better world of greater privacy rights and people's control of their own data that we web developers should embrace.

The huge potential fines (for large companies, the sky's the limit at four percent of global revenue) come from the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation, and they signal that the GDPR is more than a suggestion. If you're not a European-based company, the European Union does not intend to discriminate: You're still liable when citizens of member states use your services or are monitored by you.

Don't lose sleep for Facebook's wealthy stockholders. That sizeable dip in Facebook stock was not due to the impending GDPR enforcement, but came in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Since then, the privacy-invading monopoly so many rich people are betting on regained its market cap and then some. (GDPR-related lawsuits are just starting.)

There's a lot of good resources for GDPR-proofing existing sites (see the bottom of this article); the work ranges from trivial for most sites to monumental tasks for web developers who, fortunately for me, aren't me (and who have finished their labor, I hope, as GDPR enforcement took effect today).

The fun and exciting part starts when we get to build new sites or new features on existing sites and from the beginning put privacy by design into practice (which also is in the law). And yes, I'm referring to complying with a continental government's regulations as fun and exciting.

When creating an About page, think about your audience and anticipate the questions they have about your organization as well as what you want them to know about you.

Drutopia

Drutopia is a platform cooperative, technology owned and supported by its users. Currently we are focusing on two Drupal distributions for grassroots organizations- the one you are using right now, Drutopia Base,  and Solidarity -  a distribution for member-based organizations.

Drutopia Base

This distribution comes with features such as an accessible and responsive theme, popular content types and onsite fundraising . You can see a full list of features on the Modules administrative page.

We're also constantly improving Drutopia Base. You can see what features and improvements we're working on at our Roadmap page.

For questions on using the distribution, you can

• consult the Help pages
• ask a question in Drutopia Chat
• File a support ticket in the Drutopia GitLab Project
• email us at info@drutopia.org

Become a Member

Drutopia is democratic! Support the project and shape its future by becoming a member. Visit drutopia.org for more information.