Web APIs in Drupal 8

Larry Garfield, Senior Architect, Palantir.netKyle Browning, Technical Consultant, Acquia

Larry GarfieldSenior Architect, Palantir.netDrupal Web Services Lead

Who are we?

Kyle BrowningTechnical Consultant, AcquiaServices, and Drupal iOS SDK maintainer

Who are we?

What are Web Services(tm)?

The Internet (TCP/IP)

The Web (HTTP)

Web Services (non-HTML)

REST (REpresentational State Transfer)

Collection of ResourcesResource identified by URIResource represented in a formatManipulate through Verbs/MethodsKnown hyperlinks to other Resources

REST (Hypermedia)

So what's wrong with Drupal 7?

Drupal 7function example_menu() { $items['my/page'] = array( 'title' => 'My page', 'page callback' => 'my_page_function', 'access arguments' => array('access content'), ); return $items;}

Only map on path

Very basic access control

Drupal 7function example_page_delivery_callback_alter(&$delivery_callback) { if (...) { $delivery_callback = 'example_deliver_page'; }}

Happens after the page callback, so mostly useless.

Drupal 7→And oh yeah, globals

▪$_GET▪drupal_add_http_header()▪print

Drupal 7

Everything other than a full HTML page is an after-thought.

So what's better in Drupal 8?

Drupal 8example.route: path: /my/page defaults: _controller: '\Drupal\example\Controller\ExampleController::page' _title: 'Example page' requirements: _permission: 'access_examples' _day: 'Tuesday' _method: 'GET'

Multiple access checks

Map on path, method, domain, etc.

Drupal 8

Arbitrary custom logic goes here

Drupal 8Theming and page layout happen here

Drupal 8

Everything's an HTTP Response. Sometimes that's a page.

Drupal 8→You can serve any type of response to a request→Wire directly to the routing system.→No duplicating routing anymore!

Drupal 8 - Serialization module→Standard serialization/deserialization pipeline→Built on Symfony Serializer component

$json = $this->serializer->serialize($entity, 'json');

$xml = $this->serializer->serialize($entity, 'xml');

$entity = $this->serializer->deserialize($json, 'Node' 'json');

Standard universal serialized format (for internal structure)!

Drupal 8 - REST module→Core module for common pattern of REST usage→~RestWS→Uses Serialization

→Define "Resource" Plugins▪GET/get(), PUT/put(), DELETE/delete()▪Return ResourceResponse▪Drupal will serialize()/deserialize() for you

Drupal 8 - REST resourcesclass DBLogResource extends ResourceBase { public function get($id = NULL) { if ($id) { $record = db_query("SELECT * FROM {watchdog} WHERE wid = :wid", [':wid' => $id]) ->fetchAssoc(); if (!empty($record)) { return new ResourceResponse($record); } throw new NotFoundHttpException(t('Log entry with ID @id was not found', ['@id' => $id])); } throw new HttpException(t('No log entry ID was provided')); }}

Drupal 8 - REST resourcesAll Content Entities are supported out-of-the-box

● Uses same URL as HTML page● All supported formats, automatically● Opt-in configuration

Easily add your own resources, too→ Teach serializer about it (Normalizer)→ Create new Resource plugin→ Profit!!1!

Drupal 8 - Content NegotiationReverse proxies suck

+Browsers suck even more

=Accept-based negotiation is broken 90% of the time :-(

Drupal 8 - Content Negotiationhttp://example.com/node/5?&_format=hal_json

http://example.com/node/5?&_format=xml

http://example.com/node/5?&_format=html (default)

Drupal 8REST UI

Drupal 8REST UI

Drupal 8 - Hypermedia LinksComing soon!

(8.1? As soon as someone works on it.)

https://www.drupal.org/node/2113345

What does Services module do?

Drupal 8 - Services→Provide endpoint capabilities to put your API behind a

centralized URL→Standardize on an approach to building non-REST APIs→Accept Header content negotiation→Gives us regular json response instead of hal_json→Config entities too!

Drupal 8 - ServicesDefinition→ Defines the ‘resource’→ Protein of Services in

D8→ Route Access→ Request method

Drupal 8 - ServicesDefinition

Still respects core

Config Entities!

Lets grab a block

Create a block

Update a block

And since everything is an entity.

Drupal 8 - Views

Respects Permissions

Thank You