First week of Google Summer of Coding

TL;DR I have started working on the project Integrate Google Cloud Vision API to Drupal 8. As of the task of this week, the common functions have been moved to services. The crucial concepts involved Dependency Injection and use of Guzzle over curl.

My mentors suggested me to create issues for my tasks in the issue queues of the module Google Vision API, where they would track my progress and also discuss and leave suggestions for the improvement of the module.

Thus, starting with my task for the first week, I created the issue Moving the common functions to services in the issue queue of the module and started coding the functions into services and injecting them as and when needed.

I started the week by learning the concepts of services and containers, and gradually learnt about Dependency Injections in Drupal 8. The post on Services and dependency injection in Drupal 8 and the videos of Drupalize.me were of great help to understand the concept of services and implement dependency injection.

After completing this part, I put the patch for review, and there followed the next part- Use of Guzzle over curl in the services and injecting the httpClient service.

I spent significant time learning the concept of Guzzle which was quite new for me. My mentors Naveen Valecha and Christian López Espínola helped me a lot to understand Guzzle, and subsequently this task was completed with Guzzle replacing curl and injection of httpClient.

In addition, the present code made use of concatenated strings for sending the data during API call. I changed the code to make use of arrays and Json utility class and its static functions to send the data instead of strings.

When the code seemed perfect, my mentors suggested me to perform clean up along with proper documentation.

At the end of the week, I successfully uploaded the patch with all the suggestions implemented, clean up done and documentation added, thereby completing the task for my first week.

Community Bonding with Drupal

TL;DR I’ll be working on Integrating Google Cloud Vision API to Drupal 8 this summer as part of Google Summer of Code programme. During my community bonding period I got the chance to work with lots of grey shavers in drupal community.

I have been selected as one of the eleven students for the Google Summer of Code, who would be coding their summer away for Drupal. This summer I will be working on project Integrate Google Cloud Vision API to Drupal 8.

The API detects objects ranging from animals to famous monuments and landmarks. Not only that, it supports the recognition of a wide range of famous logos/brands. Face detection, text detection within an image and safe searches are among the other features which this API provides. It is really cool for a Content Management System to have such a powerful feature, so I would be working this summer to implement this feature in Drupal.

Before jumping directly into the coding phase, the students selected for the Google Summer of Code, were given a month to bond with the community, their mentors and other friends with whom they share the same platform. This phase is known as “Community Bonding Period”, which lasted from April 23, 2016 to May 22, 2016.

Everyday brings up new opportunities to do something new, meet like-minded people across the globe, and contribute to awesomeness!!

This is the simplest way in which I can put the "Community Bonding" period.

This is the ideal time when the students get closer to the community, interact with their mentors, learn more about the organization codebase and have a more detailed discussion on the project and its timelines before actually start the coding.

To mentor me through the project, I have been blessed with two experienced mentors- Naveen Valecha and Christian López Espínola. I have been discussing with them on the project, its execution and the tough areas for last few weeks. I was also guided to learn some basic methodologies, including the services and configuration management which would be of great help in my project. Meanwhile, I also devoted my time to the community by contributing in the core issues, providing suggestions, developing patches and reviewing the project applications, including Field Group Table Component and AddressField Copy of the newbies in the Drupal world, highlighting how can they develop it in a better way, and thus lightening the burden of the community as far as I could.

In this one month, I met a lot of like-minded across the globe who have gathered together to take the community to greater heights, and I felt myself lucky enough to get an opportunity to work with them. I tried developing good bonding with my mentors, being in touch with them and bringing to their notice all my actions and tracks. 
This I suppose is the most essential purpose of this one month pre-coding phase.

Here, I would also like to share a strange experience of mine during the community bonding period. During this phase, I came to know that the project on which I am working on, was already initiated by Eugene Ilyin. Here lies the bond strength of the Drupal Community. On having the discussion on this with Eugene, he not only agreed to let me work on the project, but has also agreed to mentor me on my project. It once again proved the awesomeness of the community, and how all of us come together, collaborate and help each other to grow as well as take the community to greater heights.

This was all about my month of Community Bonding.

The month ends, and now we jump into coding the summer away.