Drupal 8 API Functions You Need to Know

This session is for developers who are familiar with creating custom modules in Drupal 7 but need some help getting started with Drupal 8. Drupal 8 has brought many changes to the API that effect nearly every task a custom module developer needs to do such as how to load entities, change or load field values, load menus, or query the database. I will present a focused look at the Drupal 8 API and what has changed from Drupal 7 and will not cover generic topics like how to create a Drupal 8 module. I will start with a brief explanation of the new concepts like static methods before going through API functions grouped by functionality. I will be showing analogous code examples of the old Drupal 7 utility function and the new Drupal 8 way to accomplish the same task without using deprecated functions where possible. 

I decided to present on this topic because I have been facing these challenges myself in a past couple months building my first sites with Drupal 8. I think it would be helpful to community to share the notes I have been making about what you need to do in Drupal 8 when you are used to having functions like field_info_instance() or menu_get_object(). It is especially needed because much of the information that I have found available on the internet about the Drupal 8 equivalents of Drupal 7 API functions is based on beta versions which are out of date. 

Attendees should expect to come away with many code examples that they can use in projects of their own.