drupal 8 as a mobile backend

Drupal 8 as a mobile backend

RESTful web services

Credits: Lin Clark, Klaus Purer

Gabriel Dragomir

Overview

1. RESTful Drupal: the building blocks

2. Setting up a Drupal REST web server

3. Verbalizing REST

4. Resource plugins

1. RESTful Drupal

• Drupal 8 REST out of the box:

• RESTful web services module

• Serialization

• HAL module: Hypertext Application Language

• HTTP basic authentication

1. RESTful Drupal

1. RESTful Drupal

1. RESTful Drupal

2. Setting up a Drupal REST WS

• Enable modules

• Configuration: generatedsites/default/files/config_XXXX/active/rest.settings.yml

• Set permissions

• Helper module: REST UIhttps://drupal.org/project/restui

3. Verbalizing REST

• Resources and operations

• Authentication and access control

• Example requests

3.1 Resources and operations

• Resource: the data structure that the service is acting on (e.g. an entity)

• Operation: the specific action (HTTP method)

3.1 Resources and operations

3.1 Plug and use

• Entity API with field metadata

• All properties and fields of an entity are described

• Any available entity can have REST API support enabled

• Each entity plugin has its own plugin

• Access control enforced:

• on the entity level

• on the field level

3.2 Authentication and access control

• Handler by HTTP Basic Auth module

• AuthenticationProviderInterface in Drupal core

• Pluggable authentication providers:

• Standard Drupal session cookie (Drupal core)

• Basic HTTP Authentication (Drupal core)

• OAuth (Contrib)

• Provides user permissions to authorize web service operations

• Each resource plugin provides own supplementary access control (example: entity and field access in the entity plugin)

3.3 Example requests

• GET entity/node/1

• CSRF tokens: GET rest/session/token

• POST entity/node

• PATCH entity/node

4. Resource plugins

• Based on Drupal 8 plugin API

• Default plugin exposes all entities

• Contributed modules can override/extend/provide plugins

• Example: dblog plugin

4. Resource plugins

Questions?

Contact me

• gabriel.dragomir@webikon.com

• twitter: gabidrg

Thank you!