Acquia

Now that Drupal 8’s REST API ¹ has reached the next level of maturity, I think a concise blog post summarizing the most important API-First Initiative improvements for every minor release is going to help a lot of developers. Drupal 8.5.0 will be released next week and the RC was tagged last week. So, let’s get right to it!

The REST API made a big step forward with the 5th minor release of Drupal 8 — I hope you’ll like these improvements :)

Thanks to everyone who contributed!

1. text fields’ computed processed property exposed #2626924

   No more need to re-implement this in consumers nor work-arounds.

This blog has been quiet for the last year and a half, because I don’t like to announce things until I feel comfortable recommending them. Until today!

Since July 2016, API-First Drupal became my primary focus, because Dries felt this was one of the most important areas for Drupal’s future. Together with the community, I triaged the issue queue, and helped determine the most important bugs to fix and improvements to add. That’s how we ended up with REST: top priorities for Drupal … plan issues for each Drupal 8 minor:

Almost a year ago, BigPipe was the first experimental module added to Drupal 8. It was still experimental in Drupal 8.2 (October 2016), but it was upgraded from alpha to beta stability. Later today, Drupal 8.3.0 is going to be released, and BigPipe is now stable!

Install it!

BigPipe is a zero-risk module. So … why not install it right now? You can uninstall it at any time. It won’t cause problems in any browser, on any web server, or with any proxy. Because:

There is zero risk of data loss. And when the environment — i.e. web server or (reverse) proxy — doesn’t support streaming, then BigPipe-delivered responses behave as if BigPipe was not installed. Nothing breaks, you just go back to the same perceived performance as before.

If you’re still on Drupal 8.2 for a while — also install it! There are no functional changes for BigPipe between 8.3 and 8.2.

Stability

In hindsight, we could have made BigPipe stable from day one, or at least in Drupal 8.2.

Today, Drupal 8.1 has been released and it includes BigPipe as an experimental module.

Six months ago, on the day of the release of Drupal 8, the BigPipe contrib module was released.

So BigPipe was first prototyped in contrib, then moved into core as an experimental module.

Experimental module?

Quoting d.o/core/experimental:

Experimental modules allow core contributors to iterate quickly on functionality that may be supported in an upcoming minor release and receive feedback, without needing to conform to the rigorous requirements for production versions of Drupal core.

…

Experimental modules allow site builders and contributed project authors to test out functionality that might eventually be included as a stable part of Drupal core.

With your help (in other words: by testing), we can help BigPipe “graduate” as a stable module in Drupal 8.2. This is the sort of module that needs wider testing because it changes how pages are delivered, so before it can be considered stable, it must be tested in as many circumstances as possible, including the most exotic ones.