Drupal meetup with two great sessions
In the middle of November, we organized a Drupal meetup. Meetup is a great way to connect web developers, designers, and other web enthusiasts. We were hosting two lecturers, David Ličen from Slovenia and Philipp Melab from Austria. In this blog post, you can learn, what they shared with us.
David Ličen, Slovenia: “Drupal point of Vue”
The Drupal point of Vue session, led by David Ličen, was a very good introduction to the decoupled Drupal, where the web application and server are separated. Session attendees were acquainted with the basics of a very simple yet powerful JavaScript library, Vue.js, which is used to create headless applications. In such applications, we often need a server with data structures accessed and manipulated through our application. In a decoupled mode, we do this with minimal communication exchange of data objects.
David also introduced us the "query language" of GraphQL, through which we can exchange data between the Drupal backend and our front-end application. We need the GraphQL Drupal module and the Apollo library as an add-on to the Vue.js application. The lecturer finally presented us with a practical example of the blog, where he used these technologies.
For me personally, the lecture was very interesting, although I already met with Vue.js and GraphQL. I had the opportunity to refresh some basics, but at the same time to learn how to run the Drupal background altogether. The lecture was very well structured and understandable for visitors who might not have known such an approach before. - Tim
Philipp Melab, Austria: “Drupal, GraphQL and React”
GraphQL was presented by Philipp Melab. GraphQL is a query language for APIs and runtime for fulfilling those queries with your existing data. With GraphQL we are exchanging data between our Application and Database. Apps that are using Graph are fast and stable because they control data they get, not the server.
To simplify things you basically write "fields" into the query that you want to retrieve from the database, and this is much faster than standard "Drupal way". Philipp also told us the difference between REST and GraphQL. In REST you create your own REST query, and it cannot be changed through the interface (front-end), that's the beauty of GraphQL that you can always change in your front-end what data you need, or you need to add a new relationship. GraphQL is more friendly to front-end developers, and also they don't "annoy" backend developers to modify a query because in GraphQL they can do it in UI. For GraphQL you need to install Drupal 8 module and then configure it correctly.
We actually learned a lot on this meetup, and we got some useful knowledge. The presentation was great even though Philipp was giving it remotely and we also got pizza at the end. :) - Matjaž
This was the last meetup from us this year, we can’t wait to host next one in 2018.
