Talking Drupal #459 - Off The Cuff 8

July 15, 2024

Today we are talking about Config Actions, The Panels Favorite Drupal Modules, and Drupal Contribution. We’ll also cover Transform API as our module of the week.

Listen:

direct Link

Topics

  • New Config Action: Place Block
  • Favorite Contrib modules
  • Slack channels
  • Preparing for Drupal 11
  • Drupal events

Resources

Module of the Week

Transform API
  • Brief description:
    • Have you ever wanted to expose your Drupal site’s data as JSON using view modes, formatters, blocks, and more? There’s a module for that.
  • Module name/project name:
  • Brief history
    • How old: created in Sep 2023 by LupusGr3y, aka Martin Giessing of Denmark
    • Versions available: 1.1.0-beta4 and 1.0.2 versions available, both of which work with Drupal 9 and 10
  • Maintainership
    • Actively maintained, in fact the latest commit was earlier today
    • Security coverage
    • Documentation: in-depth README and a full user guide
    • Number of open issues: 14 open issues, 3 of which are bugs, but none against the current branch
  • Usage stats:
    • 2 sites
  • Module features and usage
    • After installing Transform API, you should be able to get the JSON for any entities on your site by adding “format=json” as a parameter to the URL
    • To get more fields exposed as JSON, you can configure a Transform mode, using a Field UI configuration very similar to view modes
    • You can also add transform blocks to globally include specific data in all transformed URLs, in the same way you would use normal blocks to show information on your entity pages. The output of transform blocks is segmented into regions,
    • Where Drupal’s standard engine produces render arrays that ultimately become HTML, Transform API replaces it with an engine that produces Transform Arrays that will ultimately become JSON
    • Where Drupal’s standard JSON:API supports more or less exposes all information as raw data for the front end to format, Transform API allows for more of the formatting to be managed on the back end, where it will use Drupal’s standard caching mechanisms, permission-based access, and more
    • Transform API also supports lazy transformers, which are callbacks that will be called after caching but before the JSON response is sent
    • You can also use alter hooks to manipulate the transformed data
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