Notes from DrupalCon - Drupal 8 meets Symfony2

The following are my notes from Drupal 8 meets Symfony2 on Wednesday, March 21st, 2012 at DrupalCon Denver. The slides can be found at http://speakerdeck.com/u/fabpot/p/symfony2-meets-drupal-8

Symfony is...

• A reusable set of standalone, decoupled, and cohesive PHP components that solve common web development problems
• Best practices
• Borrows ideas from other frameworks and languages
• Flexible and extenible
• an Object-Oriented set of classes
• compatible with PHP 5.3 and later
• a full-stack web framework
  • Drupal is using some
• http://symfony.com
  • http://symfony.com/components
• https://github.com/symfony/symfony
  • https://github.com/symfony/XXXX
• irc.freenode.net/symfony

Which Open-Source projects are already using the Symfony Components?

Projects

• Behat - a BDD framework
• Doctrine - an Object Relational Mapper and Database Abstraction Layer
• Propel - an object relational mapper
• PHPUnit - a PHP unit testing framework
• Jackalope - a content repository

Frameworks

• Silex - a micro-framework
• PPI 2 - a framework

Products

• easybook - a book publishing platform
• Midgard CMS - a content management framework
• Zikula - an application framework
• phpBB - a bulletin board software

What about Drupal 8?

• ClassLoader
• HttpFoundation
  • HttpKernel
  • Routing
• EventDispatcher
  • DependencyInjection

Using the Symfony Components

• Acquiring:
  • Git
  • Archves
  • PEAR
  • Composer
• Symfony Components comes with Drupal 8

ClassLoader

• Loads classes on demand, only when needed
• Built to autload any PHP Class if it follows standard conventions
  • http://symfony.com/doc/current/components/class_loader.html

HttpFoundation

• Symfony leverages open standards, including HTTP (RFC 2616)
  • http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2616.txt
• http://symfony.com/doc/current/components/http_foundation.html
• Defines a feature-full object-oriented layer for the HTTP Messages
• Replaces PHP native global variables and functions to allow writing better, more secure, and more testible code

Routing

• http://symfony.com/doc/current/components/routing.html

EventDispatcher

Similar to drupal hook system; biggest difference is that it’s OO.

HttpKernel

Implements dynamic part of HTTP specification.

HTTP Caching

• Symfony provides no caching layer for web pages; relies on HTTP cache headers
• Expiration
  • Cache-Control
  • Expires
• Validation
  • Last-Modified
  • If-Modified-Since
  • Etag
  • If-None-Match
• Expiration wins over Validation
  • Cache the page for a short period of time, 10 seconds for example, and every 10 seconds the page is validated
• Using the default HttpKernel allows Drupal to Benefit

Notes from DrupalCon - What's New in the Panels Universe

The following are my notes from What's New in the Panels Universe on Wednesday, March 21st, 2012 at DrupalCon Denver.

What IS the Panels Universe?

• Panels
• http://drupal.org/project/panels
• Layout manager
• May end up in core in D8
• Page Manager (CTools)
• http://drupal.org/project/ctools
• GUI for hook_menu
• Panels Everywhere
• http://drupal.org/project/panels_everywhere
• Replacement for blocks and templates
• A lot of work will be done on this over the next year
• Panelizer
• http://drupal.org/project/panelizer
• Panel nodes “on steroids”
• Fieldable Panel Panes
• http://drupal.org/project/fieldable_panels_panes
• Entities that can be used as fields
• Like theme module for blocks
• Field API Pane Editor (FAPE)
• http://drupal.org/project/fape
• Entity Revision Scheduling (incomplete)
• http://drupal.org/project/ers
• You’ll need to check it out of git; no releases yet
• Panopoly
• http://drupal.org/project/panopoly

New in Panels

• Redesigned IPE (In Place Editor)
• Can change layout
• Can change pane styles
• Less ugly
• Pane locking
• Can lock panes to a region or make them immobile
• Content people wanted to control where the content was; these ads and header elements can’t move
• Currently does not prevent deletion; will be added in the next couple weeks

Panelizer

• Like Panel nodes, but with context
• For any node
• Or user
• Or taxonomy term
• By bundle
• With defaults
• That can be picked by the node editor
• Very granular set of permissions
• Entity generic - plugins for users, for example
• Presents users with a slimmed down interface
• no need for the page manager UI
• Covers 90% of use cases of variants

Fieldable Panel Panes

• An entity that can be added as a pane
• Create on the fly or in an administrative UI
• Full access control
• Supports bundles through a hook (no UI)
• Like BEAN module for blocks
• Example: Create an entity with whatever fields you want, such as an image

Field API Pane Editor

• Form to edit a single field on a single entity
• Contextual link on a panel to hit that form in the overlay
• Offers ability to save revisions
• Isolation of experience
• Not tied to panels

Entity Revision Scheduler

• Create a “draft” revision that is not the normal revision used
• Schedule when a revision is set to the current revision
• Works for Nodes as well as Fieldable Panel Panes
• Entity agnostic
• Incomplete; more works
• Patch in the queue to unschedule

Panopoly

• Panels-based site-builder distribution
• Based upon OpenAcademy but generalized
• Still in its infancy
• Should provide a fantastic starting point for site building
• Now includes starter content