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Drupal 9 is scheduled for release on June 3, 2020. And as with any highly anticipated release, questions abound: “What will change from Drupal 8 to Drupal 9?” “What do I need to do to prepare before upgrading?” And top-of-mind is the big question: “What will Drupal 9 be like to work with?”

Read on as we share what you’ll need to know … and what might surprise you.

Anybody who’s upgraded from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8 recalls the giant chasm between the two systems. Almost 200 new features were launched including an entirely new page editor, a new theme engine, a new text editor, and new field types, to name but a few.

This gap doesn’t exist between Drupal 8 and Drupal 9. In fact, on the surface, there IS no difference: Drupal 9 has the same code, functions, and feature set as Drupal 8.9.

So why release it then? As it turns out, there are differences — they’re just not front-and-center on the interface.

Time to Clean House

Throughout its development cycle, Drupal 8 has wound up with a lot of code debt: functions that were created programmatically and used for some time but have been rendered redundant by more efficient functions.

These bits of code clutter up Drupal 8 like your old CDs and DVDs clutter up your bookshelf: There’s nothing wrong with them, but you probably don’t need them anymore now that you have something more efficient.

The result of all this extra code is that programmatically, there might be 10 different ways to do one single thing.

What Drupal has done is marked all of those code items in the backend code base as being “deprecated”. When Drupal 9 comes out, the plan is to remove all the deprecated code on this list, leaving only the latest version of whatever that code’s API is. They’ll also be updating third-party dependencies, such as Symfony and Twig. From Drupal’s site:

“Drupal 9 will be a cleaned-up version of Drupal 8. It will be the same as the last Drupal 8 minor version with our own deprecated code removed and third-party dependencies updated. We are building Drupal 9 in Drupal 8.”

Will Drupal 9 Be Better?

Yes, but not without some minor risks.

Jettisoning all this deprecated code will result in a much faster, cleaner, and better-operating version of Drupal. However, if you have legacy programs whose modules use some of that deprecated code, you could find yourself with some broken processes.

How to Prepare for Drupal 9

In general, upgrading to Drupal 9 is not an onerous process – it can literally be done via a single command. What will take more time is monitoring and auditing code bases to ensure that none of your functionality is dependent upon deprecated code.

Fortunately, Drupal is well prepared for this, and has indicated that the Drupal 8 branch of the Upgrade Status module can be used  to identify and report on any deprecated code:

“This module scans the code of the contributed and custom projects you have installed, and reports on any deprecated code that must be replaced before the next major version. Available project updates are also suggested to keep your site up to date as project will resolve deprecation errors over time.”

In addition, we anticipate that when downloading or updating modules, Drupal will likely advise whether there are compatibility issues due to bad functions. However, that notification system isn’t currently in place (if it indeed happens at all), so your best bet is to work with your development partner, who can audit your code to identify any trouble spots.

Marie Kondo-ing Your Infrastructure

Drupal 9 will be a much faster and more streamlined platform, but it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. If the rest of your operational architecture is similarly full of code debt and redundant processes, updating Drupal 9 will be akin to sending a Lamborghini down a pothole-rutted road: That powerful engine is wasted if the route is slowing it down.

So, going to Drupal 9 is an excellent opportunity to look at your legacy systems, audit them as well, and make sure your entire infrastructure is clean, fast, and free of roadblocks.

The Bottom Line

In general, upgrading to Drupal 9 should not be a complex or lengthy process. By cleaning out the clutter and performing some common dependencies, Drupal is practicing good development hygiene and providing its customers with a more streamlined system that will be faster … but still familiar.

Want to know more? Contact us today!

 

The post Drupal 9: What’s New, What to Expect appeared first on .

Let’s discuss the fundamentals of what web accessibility is, how to make your website accessible, and what tools there are based your website’s CMS (Drupal modules or WordPress plugins).

As Dries Buytaert explained in his Plan for Drupal 9 post at the end of 2018 (emphasis mine):

Drupal 8's biggest dependency is Symfony 3, which has an end-of-life date in November 2021. This means that after November 2021, security bugs in Symfony 3 will not get fixed. Therefore, we have to end-of-life Drupal 8 no later than November 2021. Or put differently, by November 2021, everyone should be on Drupal 9.

Working backwards from November 2021, we'd like to give site owners at least one year to upgrade from Drupal 8 to Drupal 9. While we could release Drupal 9 in December 2020, we decided it was better to try to release Drupal 9 on June 3, 2020. This gives site owners 18 months to upgrade. Plus, it also gives the Drupal core contributors an extra buffer in case we can't finish Drupal 9 in time for a summer release.

Here we are 14 months later and while most people took the June 3 release date and took it for granted, it is still not guaranteed! However you can help in various ways to make it much more likely!

Late last fall, we focused on defining what it means if we cannot make the June 3, 2020 release despite our best efforts and what is an early indicator that tells us we are going to miss it. First of all, that meant defining requirements for the first alpha release and requirements for the first beta (API complete) release. Also we needed to set some expectations as to when do we want to see the API-complete beta release to give enough time for the ecosystem to test it and find important problems in time. Based on how soon the beta requirements are met, there are three release scenarios and the best case ending in the June 3, 2020 release date for Drupal 9 has a beta deadline in 6 weeks! Yes, 42 days!

Alpha requirements simplified

The key requirements for the first alpha release are simple. We wanted to update the key dependencies: Symfony to version 4.4 and Twig to version 2, as well as remove frontend polyfills that were not needed and remove most of jQuery UI (which were already deprecated in Drupal 8). This gets our most important dependencies up to shape to what will be in Drupal 9. We also made it possible for contributed projects to depend on Drupal 8 and 9 at the same time, so they will not need to branch for Drupal 9 support.

There are two outstanding things for the Drupal 9 alpha:

1. Drupal.org does not yet have an automated packaging pipeline that conforms to all the recent composer related improvements and therefore making core releases is error prone. I don't believe you can help with this at this time, the Drupal Association is hard at work on this.
2. Drupal core should use a major version agnostic update feed for projects which is already being provided by Drupal.org but the core code to consume it is still in the works. While this is actively being worked on, reviews are always helpful. This will make sure Drupal 9's Update Status gets only contributed projects that are actually Drupal 9 compatible, while contributed modules will not need to establish a Drupal 9 branch.

Beta requirements simplified

The beta requirements are a bit more complicated and longer of course because we are looking at being API complete here. Once again, for the June 3, 2020 release date, we need these done in 6 weeks! The issue lists must haves and should haves, however the should have issues should be considered must-have for the June 3, 2020 release date and would only be reconsidered later if that date cannot be met. Here is a simplified rundown of the beta requirements:

1. We want to keep dependencies up to date. There is no concrete pressing issue here at the moment that I know, but this really depends on how our dependencies evolve.
2. We'd like to remove all the deprecated APIs themselves. Last year I built a graph to track this, and it shows nicely that we are down to half of them remaining (yay!), but still quite enough to deal with. There are various outstanding issues you can help with here.
3. We want to make sure people can update to Drupal 9 from Drupal 8 by resolving critical upgrade path bugs. If you cannot update to a later version of Drupal 8 due to some critical bug, then you will be stuck on your version of Drupal 8. Not good. These include views, layout_discovery, taxonomy, menu_content, etc. related issues. All of them need help. If you are on an older version and can reproduce the problems, that is useful. If you have experience in these areas, your input would be useful.
4. It will only be possible to update to Drupal 9 from Drupal 8.8 or 8.9, so all older update paths and their tests should be removed. Older versions of Drupal 8 will themselves be unsupported already at the time of Drupal 9's release. This issue is getting close but needs reviews.
5. No new security or data integrity issues should be in Drupal 9. If there are any, they should be resolved. I don't know of any issues at the moment here.
6. The API should be complete. There are no critical API additions or changes that I know of at the moment in this general category.
7. We want to make sure people can migrate from Drupal 6/7 to Drupal 9. This needs the remaining multilingual migration paths to go stable. This is an area where we posted several call to actions, but still need your help. There are proposed migration paths for node translations and entity translations that respect revisions but they need at least code reviews to make sure they are good. Otherwise if you had content translations with revisions, the migration will not be correct. Without that, multilingual migrations will not go stable.
8. PHP requirements should be finalised. It is likely at this time that Drupal 9 will require PHP 7.3 that is being worked on currently and could use a review.
9. Database requirements should be finalised in terms of MySQL/MariaDB/Percona and PostgreSQL. Both issues need data as to which distributions and hosts support certain versions.
10. The right security update information should be provided for users taking the one year support cycle and long term support of the last Drupal 8 release. This could also use reviews.
11. We should put Drupal's base theme on a track so that it can evolve in Drupal 9 finally. This involves creating a new stable9 theme and decoupling the core themes from Classy. Various issues to help with here.
12. Drupal.org should support multi-core compatibility eg. on project pages, localize.drupal.org, etc. This work is currently deprioritised by the Drupal Association due to the focus on the packaging pipeline blocker that I listed first. Once this gets attention, it will likely uncover core issues to resolve as well.

The two areas that receive the least attention at the moment are upgrade path blockers and the stability of the multilingual migration path, so those two are the most pressing where we need your help!

While the above is a complete rundown of the current beta requirements, it may change later on, so refer to the beta requirements issue later on for up to date information.

What happens if all the above are not done by end of February (in six weeks)

If all goes well, with your help, we'll be done with all the above in six weeks. If that does not work out, we have a plan B and a plan C. Here is how those options unfold. If beta requirements are only done two months later by end of April, then Drupal 9's first beta will be released on the first week of May and Drupal 9 is to be released on August 5, 2020. If the beta requirements are only done by end of August (four more months later), than the first beta will be released than with a Drupal 9 release date of December 2, 2020. In this case a Drupal 8.10 may also be released if needed. These dates are spelled out well in the Drupal core release cycle overview. I created this visual to help understand the alternate timelines:

While I think it is reassuring that we have plans for what happens if our initial date targets don't work out, unfortunately the end of life date at the end of next year for Drupal 8 is not movable because it is based off of Symfony 3's end of life. So the sooner we can make Drupal 9 happen (while meeting the upgrade and stability requirements) the better. What are you going to work on to help?

Helping with contributed projects

Based on the PHP deprecations our tools can identify, 43% of contributed projects would only need info.yml file updates to be Drupal 9 compatible. An additional 41% of the remaining projects have only issues that are resolvable now (even while keeping support for Drupal 8.7). Solving those anytime between now and Drupal 9's release (whenever it is) would put us to almost six thousand contributed projects compatible with Drupal 9 on day one! While that is a very idealistic number, helping with contributed projects is nonetheless a great avenue to contribute to Drupal 9 readiness. Help at the Drupal Global Contribution Weekend at end of next week or anytime before and after! I prepared a quickstart guide for this occasion.

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Last year I embarked on a personal open source challenge, focused on Drupal. Very easy to say: “12 months 12 patches”. Some months my work lent itself naturally to contributions, but when it didn’t, I got creative. Here’s how I made it happen, and inspired others on my team to follow suit. 

Description With the release of Drupal 8.8, Drush is also due for an upgrade — to Drush 10. For this venerable command-line interface that many Drupal developers know intimately well, what does the present and future look like? What considerations should we keep in mind when selecting Drupal Console or Drush? What new features are available in Drush 10 that characterize the new CI/CD approaches we see expanding in the Drupal community? In this Tag1 Team Talk, join the creator and maintainer of Drush Moshe Weitzman (Senior Technical Architect at Tag1), Fabian Franz (Senior Technical Architect and Performance Lead at Tag1), Preston So (Editor in Chief at Tag1), and Michael Meyers (Managing Director at Tag1) for a journey through Drush’s history and promising future. We take a deep look at what made Drush what it is today, the most compelling features in Drush 10, and how a hypothetical Drush in core could look.Read more jgilbert Fri, 01/17/2020 - 07:00

Explore how open source has become the most widely used and most popular option for developers from its inception to recent years.

A Beginners Quest to Exploring React Native with Drupal Lindsey Gemmill Thu, 01/16/2020 - 16:37

Are you prepared for a better tomorrow? – The Drupal 9 Checklist and What’s New Shefali Shetty 16 Jan, 2020 Top 10 best practices for designing a perfect UX for your mobile app

Drupal 9 is just around the corner. Do you have a plan to upgrade to Drupal 9? Are you still in the “Why should I upgrade to Drupal 9 after all” phase? Wondering what your next steps should be for Drupal 9 readiness? We have answers to all your questions and a quick Drupal 9 checklist on how to prepare for Drupal 9.

The best way to prepare yourself for tomorrow is to give your best today. And very apparently, the Drupal community has done just that. I know, migrating to Drupal 8 from previous versions was hard. It meant a complete rebuild of the code and a lot of learning. But once you are fully onboard Drupal 8, life gets easier. Think of it as a hard climb for a gorgeous view from the mountaintop. Truly worth all the effort, isn’t it?
 

The Much-Talked-About Drupal 9 Release Date

One of the most frequently asked Drupal questions lately has been about the Drupal 9 release date. Drupal 9 is currently scheduled to release on June 3rd, 2020. The Drupal community has been successfully releasing minor versions every six months since the adoption of semantic versioning in Drupal 8. Every minor version came with several valuable new features. 

Drupal 8 extensively depends on third-party libraries like Symfony, Twig, Guzzle, CKEditor and must keep up pace with their updates as well. For example, Symfony 3 (Drupal 8’s biggest dependency) will reach EOL (end of life) by November 2021. The same time as Drupal 8 reaches end of life as well. Drupal 9 will be released with the latest Symfony 4.4 support and will not be backwards compatible with Symfony 3. 

The Drupal 9 Readiness Roadmap (Image Credits – Drupal.org)What’s New in Drupal 9 (Drupal 8 vs Drupal 9)

Drupal 9 is already being built within Drupal 8. Drupal 8.9 will release along with Drupal 9.0 in June 2020. This is because Drupal 9 is going to be the same as Drupal 8.9, except that it will be a cleaned-up version that is updated with support for its third-party dependencies. And hence one of the outstanding Drupal 9 features is that it is so easy to upgrade!

Every new minor version of Drupal 8 saw many new features but it also contained a lot of old code so it could be backwards compatible. This “old code” is also famously known as “deprecated code”. Because of the dependencies on third parties like Symfony, Twig, etc., Drupal 9 will incorporate updates to these dependencies. Drupal contributors and module developers are collectively making the road to Drupal 9 easier by eliminating “bad smelling code” (as Jacob Rockowitz calls it in his blog about deprecating code for his Webform module) from various Drupal 8 modules.

What’s new in Drupal 9.0 (Image Credits - Drupal.org)

From Drupal 9.1 onwards, the same story continues. New Drupal 9 features will continue to be added every six months (Drupal 9.1..Drupal 9.2..Drupal 9.3…and so on) which will be backwards compatible with Drupal 9.

“If Drupal 9 is the same as Drupal 8.9, why should I even upgrade?”. Because Drupal 8 reaches end of life on November 2021 and will stop receiving any security fixes or updates from then on. So once Drupal 9 is released, there is an 18-month window to upgrade to Drupal 9. Sure, long-term support will be offered by Drupal vendors, but do we really want to miss out on all the new Drupal 9 features and enhancements that it will offer?

Drupal 9 Checklist

Regardless whether you’re upgrading from Drupal 7 to Drupal 9 or Drupal 8 to Drupal 9, you will need to start planning for Drupal 9. The scheduled release is soon approaching and now is a good time to get prepared for Drupal 9. 

• Drupal 7 to Drupal 9
  If you are still on Drupal 7 and looking forward to getting onboard Drupal 9, it isn’t too late. Ideally, it is recommended you upgrade to Drupal 8 now and stay updated with the latest core releases. Migrate content and code to Drupal 8, Check for availability of modules in Drupal 8 using the Upgrade Status Drupal module, upgrade your Drupal 7 modules to Drupal 8 with the help of modules such as Drupal Module Upgrader, remove any deprecated code, upgrade to Drupal 9. And as already discussed, upgrading from Drupal 8’s latest version to Drupal 9 is easy as pie. Upgrading from Drupal 7 to Drupal 9 will take as much resource time (and resource budget) as a Drupal 7 to Drupal 8 to Drupal 9 upgrade. Drupal 7 will reach end-of-life by November 2021 and will continue to receive community support until then. 
• Stay Up to date with Drupal 8
  With every new minor version release of Drupal 8, the benefits are not only restricted to access to new features and enhancements. It also takes you one step closer to Drupal 9. Since Drupal 8.8 is the last minor release before the Drupal 8.9 release (which also happens at the same time as Drupal 9!), it is the last Drupal 8 version to contain significant feature additions. Drupal 8.9 releases on June 3rd, 2020 and will include more stable modules (that were previously experimental) and a few UX and API enhancements. So, the best thing to do now is to keep Drupal core updated and update your website to Drupal 8.8. 
• Weed out the Deprecated code
  Make way for new and improved features by removing old and deprecated code from your Drupal 8 codebase. When you keep Drupal core and contributed modules up to date, you are also embracing cleaner code. Updated versions remove usage of deprecated code and API. There are various methods to check for deprecated code. 
  • Sometimes functions are marked with @deprecated annotations that warn the developer that the following code is deprecated and what they should be using instead. 
  • Use a command-line tool like Drupal Check (by Matt Glaman from Centarro) to help check for deprecated code and other bugs. It can also be integrated in continuous integration environments.
  • Leverage the Drupal 8 Upgrade Status module on top of Drupal-Check for a more UI based solution. It can scan your entire Drupal project and generates a report that illustrates any compatibility issues and Drupal 9 readiness. 
  • Drupal.org also offers support to check for Drupal 9 readiness and deprecation within its testing system. Like enabling static analysis with phpStan or by setting a trigger_error() when a deprecated level is reached.
    
    Once identified, it is time for some manual work to remove the deprecated code and refine existing codebase. Use automated tools like Drupal 8 rector to resolve some code issues, although it does need some manual intervention.

As the Drupal 9 release date approaches, there is an air of enthusiasm within the Drupal community. A lot of effort and TLC has gone into rebuilding and rearchitecting Drupal 8 not only to widen the scope of adoption but to pave an easier path to Drupal 9 and consequent major version upgrades. Very simply put in the words of Dries about the plan for Drupal 9, “The big deal about Drupal 9 is … that it should not be a big deal.” 

At Specbee, our Drupal specialists are happy to assist you in planning for Drupal 9 and will ensure a seamless transition of your website.
 

Drupal Planet Shefali ShettyApr 05, 2017 Subscribe For Our Newsletter And Stay Updated Subscribe

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  Shefali ShettyApr 05, 2017 Recent Posts Image Are you prepared for a better tomorrow? – The Drupal 9 Checklist and What’s New Image Neural Networks - What Does the Future of Artificial Intelligence Look Like? Image Top Drupal 8 Modules You Absolutely Need For your next Drupal project Want to be better prepared for Drupal 9? Contact Us TALK TO US Featured Success Stories

Know more about our technology driven approach to recreate the content management workflow for [24]7.ai

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Find out how we transformed the digital image of world’s largest healthcare provider, an attribute that defined their global presence in the medical world.

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Discover how a Drupal powered internal portal encouraged the sellers at Flipkart to obtain the latest insights with respect to a particular domain.

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Read our Roadmap to understand how this work falls into priorities set by the Drupal Association with direction and collaboration from the Board and community.

Project News Get Ready for Drupal 9

The next minor release of Drupal will be 8.9 - to be released simultaneously with Drupal 9.0. The first target window for the release is this coming June, so now is the best time to get ready for the release.

As it turns out, many contributed or even custom modules only need a one-line change to be ready for Drupal 9. Check yours using: the upgrade status module, or the Drupal Check command line tool.

DrupalCon Minneapolis 2020

Speaking of Drupal 9, DrupalCon Minneapolis is coming up from May 18-20. We expect their to be a large amount of programming and contribution focused on the upcoming release of Drupal 9. Minneapolis will be a great opportunity to get help with checking your module compatibility, or to find someone who can help you get your Drupal 7 or 8 site ready for the upgrade. Get your tickets now, before prices go up!

DrupalCon Europe 2020

Did you hear the news? DrupalCon Europe 2020 has been announced - and DrupalCon is coming back to Barcelona from Sep 14-17th.

Our partnership with Kuoni Congress continues, and we're excited to join you in beautiful Spain to celebrate Drupal 9 together.

Mark your calendars, and bookmark the site - more info coming soon!

Drupal.org Update Have you unwrapped automatic updates yet?

In November we finished the primary engineering work to support Phase 1 of the Automatic Updates initiative. In December we completed validation and testing, and launched the first stable release of the Automatic Updates module.

In its current form, Automatic Updates is available as a contributed module for both Drupal 7 and Drupal 8. After installing the module you'll be able to take advantage of three new features: 

• When the Drupal Security Team identifies a critical release, they'll be able to publish a PSA that will be directly displayed in your admin interface. 
• The module will run automated readiness checks to make sure your site is ready for the update, or to let you know if there are errors you need to fix.
• The module will automatically apply Drupal core updates. 

What about automatic updates for contributed modules and composer dependencies?

The next phase of work on the Automatic Updates initiative is to support updates for contributed modules, and for sites managing Composer dependencies.

This is where we need your help! We're looking for organizational sponsors to help move this work forward. If you're interested in helping us move the initiative into the next phase, please contact the Association.

We want to thank: The European Commission, Acquia, Tag1, Mtech, and Pantheon for their support of Phase 1.

Expanding Drupal Solution content with Feature pages

About two years ago we decided to start featuring Drupal Solutions on Drupal.org. These Solutions are examples of Drupal being used in the real world in specific use cases. Our first series of this content was the Drupal Industry pages, highlighting the power for Drupal in specific industry verticals.

In December, we've just launched our next set of content, this time focusing on specific features of Drupal that set it apart from the competition. These Feature pages talk about the specific Drupal Solutions that are built around key features of the software.

Updating our packaging pipeline

Do you know what goes into a packaged release of Drupal? It's not just a git clone - and as of Drupal 8.8.0 the package you download from Drupal.org also includes Composer scaffold files.  As Drupal evolves, the way we deliver the software to users has to evolve along with it.

To support the increasingly sophisticated packaging process for Drupal, we started work on overhauling our packaging pipeline for Drupal releases. This work continues into January.

Preparing for contrib Semver

As part of Drupal 9's release we are working to migrate all of the projects on Drupal.org to properly use semantic versioning. Right now, contributed modules typically use a version format like: 7.x-1.6 or 8.x-1.7. The first part of this is just the platform version (D7 vs. D8), and the second part is the Major version and the Patch version.

We'll be migrating this version schema so that the current Major version remains the Major version, the current Patch version becomes the Minor version, and we'll add the ability to define new patch versions.

This enables several improvements. Firstly, contrib maintainers can now follow backwards compatibility policies similar to core, i.e: Major versions with backwards compatibility breaking changes, minor version with new features, and patch versions for bug fixes and security releases.  Secondly, because contributed modules can now be compatible with both Drupal 8 and Drupal 9, contrib semver will be an important part of keeping version management sane.

We've made some initial progress in that direction, and have a roadmap for completing this support.

———

As always, we’d like to say thanks to all the volunteers who work with us, and to the Drupal Association Supporters, who make it possible for us to work on these projects. In particular, we want to thank:

• Platform.sh - Renewing Premium Hosting Supporter
• publicplan - Renewing Premium Supporting Partner<
• Asentech - Renewing Classic Supporting Partner
• One Shoe - Renewing Classic Supporting Partner
• Electric Citizen - Renewing Classic Supporting Partner

If you would like to support our work as an individual or an organization, consider becoming a member of the Drupal Association.

Follow us on Twitter for regular updates: @drupal_org, @drupal_infra

CLI tools is a great way to automate certain tasks for your CI needs. For example you re-use same shell scripts project to project. Or maybe you are integrating with some third-party service. Abstracting these tasks into your own CLI tool could be a great way to go.

You can think about some examples from Drupal world -- each hosting provider has some sort of CLI tool. European Commission has one to automate certain DevOps tasks (https://github.com/openeuropa/task-runner).

In my case I was building one for interacting with Diffy -- visual testing platform. Repository of the CLI tool is https://github.com/DiffyWebsite/diffy-cli

First, when I initially thought about idea of building a CLI tool I thought about the tools I used myself. Among them there were Drush and Terminus (Pantheon’s CLI tool). They both use https://robo.li/ so my choice was obviously to use this framework as well.

Getting started

One of the best parts of Robo is that they is a Starter project (https://github.com/g1a/starter) that will create a code for you and also push it to your github.

Once you’ve done that you can start creating your commands right away.

Command syntax

And that is simply creating classes that extend \Robo\Tasks class.

For example here is a command that saves a configuration variable:

You can definitively recognize annotations if you have build custom Drush commands in the past.

Configuration

As for configuration Robo already promotes having a config file in your home folder as a YAML file. So for Diffy we store it in ~/.diffy-cli/diffy-cli.yml file.

There is a component https://github.com/consolidation/config/ that is used in Terminus and Drush. It is really great. Allows merging configs (imagine providing defaults and allowing override them) and also getting nested properties (get(‘foo.bar.baz’) type syntax).

But for my case I just needed to save an API key. So I went with a custom Config that simply saved or loaded parsed YAML file https://github.com/DiffyWebsite/diffy-cli/blob/master/src/Config.php.

Distribution as a PHAR file, self:update

Best part of the starter project is an example how you can pack the tool into single PHAR file.

Main idea is to use Travis to build and publish your PHAR file. Main idea is that you will need to use Travis CLI tool and run “travis setup releases”. Make sure to deploy released for tags only.

I have found more detailed instructions here and here.

Because of the starter project sets the setSelfUpdateRepository() for the runner whenever in the future next release will be available -- you can simply run yourcommand self:update to self update the tool.

Tags: drupal planet

When migrating content with the Drupal 8 migrate module, the creation and updating of new entities may fire lots of custom module hooks. This may or may not be desired; if you have found yourself here, it probably interferes with the source data in a problematic way, or unnecessarily slows down the migration process.

The cleanest way I found to stop specific hooks for specific migrations, is to add a dummy/meta field to the migration and check for its value in the hook.

Include a dummy field in the migration

In the process section of the migration, add a field with a name that will not interfere with any field name of the target entity:

This blog has been re-posted and edited with permission from Dries Buytaert's blog.

Nineteen years ago today, I released Drupal 1.0.0. Every day, for the past nineteen years, the Drupal community has collaborated on providing the world with an Open Source CMS and making a difference on how the web is built and run.

It's easy to forget that software is written one line of code at the time. And that adoption is driven one website at the time. I look back on nearly two decades of Drupal, and I'm incredibly proud of our community, and how we've contributed to a more open, independent internet.

Today, many of us in the Drupal community are working towards the launch of Drupal 9. Major releases of Drupal only happen every 3-5 years. They are an opportunity to bring our community together, create something meaningful, and celebrate our collective work. But more importantly, major releases are our best opportunity to re-engage past users and attract new users, explaining why Drupal is better than closed CMS platforms.

As we mark Drupal's 19th year, let's all work together on a successful launch of Drupal 9 in 2020, including a wide-spread marketing strategy. It's the best birthday present we can give to Drupal.

What is digital accessibility? Andrew Nevins Wed, 01/15/2020 - 17:05

The word accessibility is used to describe whether something can be used by everyone, regardless of ability. Digital accessibility is referring to websites and apps ensuring that people with disabilities (permanent, temporary or situational) find them easy to use. 

At least 15% of the world’s population - one billion people - have a recognised disability. There are many ways in which a person’s disability may affect the way they perceive information online, and how they navigate within pages. 

This year Drupal Global Contribution Weekend is on January 24-26, 2020 with such varied locations as Delhi, Novosibirsk, Ghent, Frankfurt, Milan, Zurich, Lutsk, London (on two continents!), Boston, Minneapolis, etc. Wow! It is truly a global gathering! With Drupal 9 planned to be released later this year, what better to focus on, than making drupal.org projects Drupal 9 ready?

To help you do that I went in and updated my open source State of Drupal 9 talk. People can use this to present at any location to get people up to speed about Drupal 9. If you need a video recording of it, there is one from DrupalCamp Belarus in May 2019. While the content got slightly updated since then, the recording should help get it.

After or instead of presenting that session, I thought a quickstart guide would be really useful to help people get started with contributing. While this looks like a colorful guide you would print, it is actually full of useful links (some to my earlier blog posts for details), so I suggest you use it in digital form.

What are you planning to do for Drupal Global Contribution Weekend this year?

Testing has become an important topic in recent years thanks to the explosion of testing technologies and continuous integration (CI) approaches but also due to the need for an ever-widening range of tests for a variety of use cases. For many developers, understanding how to incorporate testing into their development workflows can be daunting due to the many terms involved and, worse yet, the many tools available both in software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies and in open-source ecosystems like Drupal. Yuriy Gerasimov (Senior Back-End Engineer at Tag1 Consulting) presented a session at DrupalCon New Orleans about modern testing approaches and how to decide on the correct suite of tests for your software development workflows. In this four-part blog series, we analyze the concepts in contemporary testing approaches that you need to know in your day-to-day and why they can not only protect but also accelerate your project progress. In this first installment, we take a look at how to sell testing as an important component of client (your stakeholders) projects, as well as why automated testing is an essential component of any web implementation. Why testing? Many people around the web development landscape have heard of testing, but when you ask about... Read more preston Wed, 01/15/2020 - 08:23

If users have questions, this is great — because this means they are interested. Providing clear and informative answers can give you enormous benefits. So it’s worth including FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) in your content marketing strategy.

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Nineteen years ago today, I released Drupal 1.0.0. Every day, for the past nineteen years, the Drupal community has collaborated on providing the world with an Open Source CMS and making a difference on how the web is built and run.

It's easy to forget that software is written one line of code at the time. And that adoption is driven one website at the time. I look back on nearly two decades of Drupal, and I'm incredibly proud of our community, and how we've contributed to a more open, independent internet.

Today, many of us in the Drupal community are working towards the launch of Drupal 9. Major releases of Drupal only happen every 3-5 years. They are an opportunity to bring our community together, create something meaningful, and celebrate our collective work. But more importantly, major releases are our best opportunity to re-engage past users and attract new users, explaining why Drupal is better than closed CMS platforms.

As we mark Drupal's 19th year, let's all work together on a successful launch of Drupal 9 in 2020, including a wide-spread marketing strategy. It's the best birthday present we can give to Drupal.

Happy Nineteenth Birthday Drupal! Shankar Wed, 01/15/2020 - 19:11

What started out as a hobby project of Dries Buytaert, is now a global project with millions of users, active contributors and a strong ecosystem. Drupal is truly a phenomenon. It has continued to see a surfeit of experimentations. Thanks to the perpetual support by the Drupal Community over the years as it has always chosen the path of innovation, reinvention and evolution. 15 January 2020 marks the nineteenth birthday of Drupal.

There have been several content management systems bursting onto the scene and fading into thin air. But Drupal, as an open-source project, has always stayed with us, evolved and continued to reach greater heights. It still offers a lot to ponder over, tinker around and build something new. With each passing year, impelled by Drupal Community’s efforts, it has started becoming more easier to use and is constantly growing at a staggering rate.

It all began in 2000 when Dries decided to put an internal site, that was used for socialising between a small group of people, online. Dorp, a Dutch word for village, was supposed to be used for the domain name. A mistyping by Dries eventually paved the way for drop.org. With more members thronging the site, having healthy discussions and using it as an experimentation platform, Dries decided to release the software behind drop.org. Drupal 1.0.0 was thus born on 15 January 2001. Open-sourcing this project allowed others to leverage and extend the experimentation platform and ultimately explore new ways of web development.

Code commit by Dries on 29 December 2000 where the project was called Drupal for the first time

Not only has Drupal scaled new heights but has also helped Drupal fraternity undergo a lot of personal reinvention. Drupalists, thus, have never missed an opportunity to celebrate Drupal's birthday every year since its launch.

Sometimes, a simple ‘Happy Birthday’ is more than enough to show your gratitude to Drupal.

At other times, the community members have expressed their merriment on sharing the same birthday date.

The typo, that happened before the birth of Drupal, never seems to get erased from the memories of the community. It has made an indelible mark in the hearts of Drupalists. Drupal Community members leave no stone unturned to show that they can be as witty as any great stand-up comedian. They can use ‘typo’ as the theme of their Drupal birthday celebrations.

A quirky style was once applied by Dries himself to celebrate Drupal's birthday.

And, a birthday cake is always special. So, we, at OpenSense Labs, organised a cake-cutting ceremony and asked our Drupalists to put forth their love for Drupal on the whiteboard.

Teenage is deemed as one of the best periods of our youth. The new sensations, victories and obstacles make for an exciting collection of memories that we hark back to. These are the kind of memories where we immerse ourselves in and go into the state of nostalgia in the later stages of life. Drupal enters its last year of teenage too. A lot of fantastic developments have happened in the last few years vis-à-vis Drupal. There is still a lot of room for improvement and the community knows where the Drupal lags behind.

2019 has especially been wonderful for Drupal as it witnessed an increase in Drupal contributions, plentitude of efforts was taken for making Drupal more diverse and inclusive and the foundation for Drupal 9 release was laid out. We, along with millions of Drupal lovers all around the world, are waiting for the launch of Drupal 9 eagerly and hoping to celebrate many more birthdays of Drupal.

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With websites playing a major role in determining customer needs and impacting business sales, a second’s lapse in loading can make a customer think twice about staying on the website.