This is the study guide for the Acquia Certified Drupal 9 Back End Specialist Examination.
This guide explains the exam blueprint, breaks down knowledge domains, and helps you get familiar with the nature of questions asked in the exam. It also provides helpful steps to prepare for the exam and links to further resources for study and preparation.
The purpose of this exam is to validate the skills and knowledge of a Drupal Developer in the area of Back end Development (Coding). This exam is based on the Drupal 9 platform.
This exam can be taken in a testing center or in your office, provided certain environmental details can be guaranteed (such as a webcam on the testing computer). Do not be discouraged if you do not pass the exam the first time. Many do not.
This exam validates a candidate’s ability to:
The basic knowledge and skills required include the following areas and objective components:
Acquia offers free Drupal preparatory courses on Acquia Academy.
Customers, Partners, and the public can self-register on the appropriate branch of Acquia Academy to access these and other Drupal resources.
We offer private, instructor-led Drupal training for groups of up to 10 people. Visit Professional Services Product Guide to review our available private training.
Through our network of training partners, we offer public, instructor-led training, sold by the seat. Visit the Acquia Developer Portal for public training listings.
After taking an introductory course, build a small website on your own to reinforce the concepts learned in the course.
Completing the courses may not fully prepare you to take the certification exam. You need some practical experience to attempt the exam. We recommend that you gain practical experience by working on at least 2-3 real-life projects.
Once you decide to take the exam, we recommend that you study the domains and topics covered by the exam and their relative weight. You should also perform a self-assessment of your own areas of strength and weakness vis-a-vis the domains/topics covered by the exam blueprint. This is a recommended starting point for experienced Drupal back end developers.
Based on your self-assessment, you may need to gain knowledge and experience in some domains or topics. The best way to learn Drupal is by working or experimenting with it. Follow the suggestions given for preparation in the Preparation section and refer to the external resources given in the Study Guide section.
At this stage, you should be ready to take the exam. Follow the instructions for registering for an exam.
| Domain | % of Questions |
|---|---|
| 1.0 Fundamental Web Development Concepts | 16% |
| 2.0 Drupal Core API | 33% |
| 3.0 Debug Code and Troubleshooting | 7% |
| 4.0 Theme Integration | 10% |
| 5.0 Performance | 14% |
| 6.0 Security | 13% |
| 7.0 Leveraging Community | 7% |
| TOTAL | 100% |
Note
This exam blueprint includes topics /domains and test objectives to help guide the test taker. They should not be construed as a comprehensive listing of all of the content of this examination.
Experienced Drupalists will likely know their weaknesses more than they know their strengths. You might have judged your own skill levels while reading through the domains listed above. It is quite natural for you to be more experienced and proficient in one domain than another. Also, within a domain, it is quite likely that you have hands-on experience on some topics but have never touched other areas within the same domain.
We suggest you perform a skills and expertise self-analysis with respect to the domains and topics listed in the blueprint. The blueprint lists test objectives (topics) for each domain. Rank your skills on a scale of 0 to 10 against each test objective (0 for absolutely zero knowledge or exposure and 10 for complete mastery).
You may use the following table to carry out your evaluation.
| Domain | Topic | Your Score (1-10) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Fundamental Web Development Concepts | |
| 1.1 | Demonstrate knowledge of HTML, CSS, JavaScript. | |
| 1.2 | Demonstrate knowledge of OO PHP programming concepts. | |
| 1.3 | Demonstrate knowledge of managing dependencies using Composer. | |
| 1.4 | Demonstrate the use of Git for version control. | |
| 1.5 | Demonstrate knowledge of automated testing concepts. | |
| 2 | Drupal core API | |
| 2.1 | Demonstrate an ability to register paths to define how URL requests are handled in Drupal using routing system and Menu API. | |
| 2.2 | Demonstrate ability to build, alter, validate and submit forms using Form API. | |
| 2.3 | Demonstrate ability to interact with the entity system using Entity API. | |
| 2.4 | Demonstrate ability to use core APIs for building and extending Drupal functionality. | |
| 3 | Debug code and troubleshooting | |
| 3.1 | Demonstrate ability to debug code. | |
| 3.2 | Demonstrate ability to troubleshoot site problems. | |
| 4 | Theme integration | |
| 4.1 | Demonstrate ability to work with Drupal’s theme system using Render API and JavaScript APIs. | |
| 4.2 | Demonstrate ability to work with Twig templates and syntax. | |
| 5 | Performance | |
| 5.1 | Demonstrate ability to analyze and resolve site performance issues arising from site configuration. | |
| 5.2 | Demonstrate ability to analyze and resolve site performance issues arising from custom code. | |
| 5.3 | Implement Drupal caching strategies using Cache API. | |
| 6 | Security | |
| 6.1 | Demonstrate ability to analyze and resolve security issues arising from site configuration. | |
| 6.2 | Demonstrate ability to analyze and resolve security issues arising from site custom code. | |
| 6.3 | Demonstrate the ability to implement Drupal core security mechanisms. | |
| 7 | Leveraging community | |
| 7.1 | Demonstrate the ability to contribute to the community. | |
| 7.2 | Demonstrate ability to write code using Drupal coding standards. |
Once you have a list of topics for which you need preparation, you will possibly face two challenges:
Customers and Partners the public can self-register on the appropriate branch of Acquia Academy and take courses in the relevant domain to refresh their knowledge.
Supplementing introductory Drupal training with documentation and online resources is a good idea.
A list of online resources and documentation for each learning domain appears in the Study Guide section.
The second challenge of finding enough practical case studies covering the topics is likely to be more daunting. Here are a few ideas and suggestions for finding case studies for your preparation:
Back end development
If you have not worked on backend development or module development, preparing for this part of the exam could appear to be a challenging task. In this case, studying the code of modules developed by your team may or may not help, as modules developed could either be extremely complex or very specific to the requirement or use case. The exam expects that you have an overall understanding of Drupal’s API, core plugin system, and their applications.
We suggest that you attend a module development course and/or build a small module on your own to prepare for this domain. If you cannot attend a training program and are a self-learner, you may try the Examples Module: (Examples for Developers).
Examples module provides highly documented working code snippets for many of the Drupal APIs and concepts covered under the blueprint of this exam.
Drupal Coding Standards
To get an overview of coding best practices and standards as they are applied in the Drupal community, see Coding standards.
These coding standards, detailed for every area in which code might be produced during Drupal development, represent the broadly established best practices of the community. Adhering to these best practices will make development go more smoothly, and your contributions to Drupal core or modules to be more readily and easily accepted. If you are working on a project with Acquia technical support, these are the coding standards to which pull requests must adhere.
Drush
Drush is considered a basic skill for Drupal site development.
Resources:
And all other core APIs listed on Drupal APIs
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