How Drupal 8 Changes the Development Workflow
by:
Luis Rodriguez
I am a Developer at iterate.
Contact Me:
- Drupal - https://www.drupal.org/u/luisrc7
- Twitter - @luisrc7
- LinkedIn - https://ie.linkedin.com/in/luisrc
- Email - luis@iterate.ie
Presentation Slides:
At iterate we design and develop Digital Experiences.
Our key focus areas are User Experience Design and Drupal.
And we are hiring!
Contact us at hello@iterate.ie or @iterate.
How Drupal 8 Changes the Development Workflow
- Drupal 7
- Drupal 8 - Configuration Management
- Drupal 8 CM + Drush
- Live Demo
Development Workflow in Drupal 7
What is configuration
- System variables (e.g. Site Name)
- Content Types, Fields or Views
- Menus
- Vocabularies
Development Workflow in Drupal 7
What is NOT configuration
- Content: Nodes or Users
- Comments
- Taxonomy Terms
- Menu Items
Image Source: http://hojtsy.hu
Different Parts
- Drupal Core (Almost all files/folders at root)
- Websites related Files (sites and profiles folders)
- Filesystem (sites/default/files or sites/my-site/files)
- Database
Any configuration change will be saved into the database
But there were some workarounds.
- Features Was meant to share packages of code to different websites
- hook_update_N
- Others like Export/Import functions (Views, Context, Rules)
My bad experiences
- Unsynchronised environments
- Changes made by Clients or other developers
- Doing configuration in Live!
- Feature's conflicts, not working issues, overrides.
Development Workflow in Drupal 8
Configuration Management !!!
Configuration Management will save Website configuration into files
CM has an interface to import/export configuration
CM uses Yaml files
Yaml files from Standard Profile installation
The CMI (Configuration Manager Initiative) was the first initiative for Drupal 8 back in 2012
The UI allows Export/Import the whole site configuration
And allows you to Export/Import single configuration files
Also has a form interface to upload the code for the new configuration through the UI
CM Dependencies
CM manage dependencies
All dependencies get deleted
This allow the UI to give better information
Custom configuration files
It's possible in custom modules
But configuration files get imported just one time
To solve this issue there is "config_update" module
Then, does Features exists in Drupal 8?
Yes
Features is focused on its original purpose
Pack configuration together to share on different websites
Features will sit under the CM path
To avoid possible issues
- Block UI changes on configuration. Module: config_readonly
- Old way, download/sync the Live site into development before make the changes
- With Drush
Benefits
- Version control your configuration
- Rollback to previous configuration
- Create automated workflow
Unfortunately CM is not magic
Configuration still need to be imported
Configuration needs to be in the database at run time
Won't solve issues like complicated dependencies or 2 people working on the same configuration
CM + Drush Basics
Since Drush 8.x version
Basic Drush commands
drush config-export
drush config-import
Basic Drush arguments
--push | --add | --commit
--destination | --source
--partial
It's Demo Time!
Drupal 7
- What is and what isn't configuration
- Parts of Drupal
- Workaround to save config in files
Drupal 8
- Configuration Management
- YAML files
- Benefits
- CM manage Dependencies
- CM is not Magic
With Drush
- Basic Import / Export commands
- Basic command parameters
- Alias combinations
Sources and Resources
- DrupalCon presentations
- Drupal.org Documentation
- Reveal.js
