Taken in its simplest form, Drupal is a procedural system that starts at line 1 of index.php and executes its code line-by-line until it outputs what a user asked for. What if we could visually explore that process to help us understand exactly how Drupal core actually works? Join webkenny and his zany cast of characters for the greatest Drupal story ever told as we explore the request in a way like you've never seen before.

Led by our hero, 8-Bit Dries (making his triumphant return in 16-Bit for Portland), we will explore the bootstrap bit by bit, traveling the configuration and cache phases, while traversing the grass plains of the variables phase. On our quest to save the Crystal Node, we'll battle form alters, sanitization of our input, the dreaded caves of Themeria, the treacherous rivers of the update system, and the castle of the evil Kitton himself to learn how to solve any problem with our knowledge of the journey!

This session is for developers looking to take their understanding of how the system works to the next level and those who have an interest in solving complicated Drupal issues.

Some of our hero's lifelong questions will be answered such as:

• What is the bootstrap and its phases? Laying the groundwork for an epic journey.
• What is the hook system and how does it really work?
• Why do render arrays hate me? Learning to debunk the complexity of the Render API.
• How does a preprocessor preprocess its preprocessors? The theme system.
• What is the update system? How does it "know" what to update?
• Who cares? Using this information to build better sites.

(A special thanks to Andre Moinar of BeCircle whose blog post not only helped me learn this topic but was an inspiration for the beginning of this session.)