Hi! I’m Wim, live in the beautiful bike-centric city of Ghent and I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to work full time on making Drupal better & faster for over a decade now! (I’m also interested in energy efficiency, smart home shenanigans and think more software empathy would make the world a better place.)

 

10 September, 2020

The sunset of the API-first initiative

Mateu, Gabe and I agreed to sunset the API-first initiative, about which I’ve written a lot in 2016–2019.

We’ve all spent countless hours on it — Gabe and I were able to work on it mostly full time, Mateu contributed an incredible amount of his free time to get the API-first initiative and the JSON:API module ecosystem in particular to where it is today.

I learned a lot from these two lovely people, and we also had lots of laughs!

Mateu wrote a great retrospective, which is a superb way to end this project. Quoted here in full:

7 January, 2020

JSON:API module version one EOL

On 7 January, 2020, the Drupal module JSON:API 1.x was officially marked unsupported. This date was chosen because it is exactly 1 year after the release of JSON:API 2.0, the version of JSON:API that was eventually committed to core. Since then, the JSON:API maintainers have been urging users to upgrade to the 2.x branch and then to switch to the Drupal core version.

We understand that there are still users remaining on the 1.x branch. We will maintain security coverage of the 8.x-1.x branch for 90 days. That is, on 6 April, 2020, all support for JSON:API, not in Drupal core, will end. Please upgrade your sites accordingly.

Thanks to my fellow maintainers Gabe Sullice and Mateu AguilĂł for writing this announcement!

17 November, 2019

DrupalCon Amsterdam 2019 keynote

All Drupal core initiatives with leads attending DrupalCon Amsterdam took part in an experimental PechaKucha-style keynote format (up to 15 slides each, 20 seconds per slide):

Drupal 8’s continuous innovation cycle resulted in amazing improvements that made today’s Drupal stand out far above Drupal 8.0.0 as originally released. Drupal core initiatives played a huge role in making that transformation happen. In this keynote, various initiative leads will take turns to highlight new capabilities, challenges they faced on the way and other stories from core development.

I represented the API-First Initiative and chose to keep it as short and powerful as possible by only using four of my five allowed minutes. I focused on the human side, with cross-company collaboration across timezones to get JSON:API into Drupal 8.7 core, how we invited community feedback to make it even better in the upcoming Drupal 8.8 release, and how the ecosystem around JSON:API is growing quickly!

It was a very interesting experience to have ten people together on stage, with nearly zero room for improvisation. I think it worked pretty well — it definitely forces a much more focused delivery! Huge thanks to Gábor Hojtsy, who was not on stage but did all the behind-the-scenes coordination.

See https://drupal.kuoni-congress.info/2019/program/abstract/1001.

Attendees: 929

Conference
DrupalCon Amsterdam
Date
Location
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Video
YouTube
Duration
4 minutes
3 September, 2019

Media embedding in Drupal 8.8

2007 is the year of my first DrupalCon, and the year the #1 most wanted end-user feature was Better media handling. 2019 is the year that Drupal will finally have it. Doing things right takes time!

Back then I never would’ve believed I would someday play a small role in making it happen :)

Without further ado, and without using a mouse:

Your browser does not support playing videos. You can download it instead.

Reusing and embedding media, using only the keyboard.

The text editor assisted in producing this HTML:

<p>Let's talk about llamas!</p>

<drupal-media alt="A beautiful llama!" data-entity-type="media" data-entity-uuid="84911dc4-c086-4781-afc3-eb49b7380ff5" class="align-center"></drupal-media>

<p>(I like llamas, okay?)</p>

If you’re wondering why something seemingly so simple could have taken such a long time, read on for a little bit of Drupal history! (By no means a complete history.)

22 May, 2019

API-First Drupal: what's new in 8.7?

Drupal 8.7 was released with huge API-First improvements!

The REST API only got fairly small improvements in the 7th minor release of Drupal 8, because it reached a good level of maturity in 8.6 (where we added file uploads, exposed more of Drupal’s data model and improved DX.), and because we of course were busy with JSON:API :)

Thanks to everyone who contributed!

  1. JSON:API #2843147

    Need I say more? :) After keeping you informed about progress in October, November, December and January, followed by one of the most frantic Drupal core contribution periods I’ve ever experienced, the JSON:API module was committed to Drupal 8.7 on March 21, 2019.

11 April, 2019

Backwards Compatibility vs Evolvability vs Maintainability

The benefits of backwards compatibility (BC) are clear: no users are left behind. Which leads to higher adoption rates because you’re often getting new features and you always have the latest security fixes.

Of course, that’s easy when you have a small API surface (as Nate Haug once said: “the WordPress API has like 11 functions!” — which is surprisingly close to the truth). But Drupal has an enormous API surface. In fact, it seems there’s APIs hiding in every crevice!

In my job at Acquia, I’ve been working almost exclusively on Drupal 8 core. In 2012–2013 I worked on authoring experience (in-place editing, CKEditor, and more). In 2014–2015, I worked on performance, cacheability, rendering and generally the stabilizing of Drupal 8. Drupal 8.0.0 shipped on November 19, 2015. And since then, I’ve spent most of my time on making Drupal 8 be truly API-first: improving the RESTful Web Services support that Drupal 8 ships with, and in the process also strengthening the JSON API & GraphQL contributed modules.

I’ve learned a lot about the impact of past decisions (by myself and others) on backwards compatibility. The benefit of backwards compatibility (BC). But the burden of ensuring BC can increase exponentially due to certain architectural decisions. I’ve been experiencing that first-hand, since I’m tasked with making Drupal 8’s REST support rock-solid, where I am seeing time and time again that “fixing bugs + improving DX” requires BC breaks. Tough decisions.

In Drupal 8, we have experience with some extremes:

  1. the BigPipe & Dynamic Page Cache modules have no API, but build on top of other APIs: they provide functionality only, not APIs
  2. the REST module has an API, and its functionality can be modified not just via that API, but also via other APIs

The first cannot break BC. The second requires scrutiny for every line of code modified to ensure we don’t break BC. For the second, the burden can easily outweigh the benefit, because how many sites actually are using this obscure edge case of the API?

We’ll look at:

  • How can we make our modules more evolvable in the future? (Contrib & core, D8 & D9.)
  • Ideas to improve this, and root cause hypotheses (for example, the fact that we have API cascades and not orthogonal APIs)

We should be thinking more actively about how feature X, configuration Y or API Z might get in the way of BC. I analyzed the architectural patterns in Drupal 8, and have some thoughts about how to do better. I don’t have all the answers. But what matters most is not answers, but a critical mindset going forward that is consciously considering BC implications for every patch that goes into Drupal 8! This session is only a starting point; we should continue discussing in the hallways, during dinner and of course: in the issue queues!

Preview:

See https://events.drupal.org/seattle2019/sessions/backwards-compatibility-burden-benefit.

Conference
DrupalCon Seattle
Date
Location
Seattle, WA, United States
Video
YouTube
Duration
30 minutes
21 March, 2019

JSON:API shipping with Drupal 8.7!

The JSON:API module was added to Drupal 8.7 as a stable module!

See Dries’ overview of why this is an important milestone for Drupal, a look behind the scenes and a look toward the future. Read that first!

Upgrading?

As Mateu said, this is the first time a new module is added to Drupal core as “stable” (non-experimental) from day one. This was the plan since July 2018 — I’m glad we delivered on that promise.

This means users of the JSON:API 8.x-2.x contrib module currently on Drupal 8.5 or 8.6 can update to Drupal 8.7 on its release day and simply delete their current contributed module, and have no disruption in their current use of JSON:API, nor in security coverage! 1

7 January, 2019

JSON:API module version two

Mateu, Gabe and I just released JSON:API 2.0!

Read more about it on Mateu’s blog.

I’m proud of what we’ve achieved. I’m excited to see more projects use it. And I’m confident that we’ll be able to add lots of features in the coming years, without breaking backwards compatibility. I was blown away just now while generating release notes: apparently 63 people contributed. I never realized it was that many. Thanks to all of you :)

I had a bottle of Catalan Ratafia (which has a fascinating history) waiting to celebrate the occasion. Why Ratafia? Mateu is the founder of this module and lives in Mallorca, in Catalunya. Txin txin!

31 December, 2018

A dozen years of Drupal

Last week was my twelfth Drupalversary!

The first half dozen years as a volunteer contributor/student, the second half as a full-time contributor/Acquia employee. Which makes this a special Drupalversary and worth looking back on :)

2006–2012

The d.o highlights of the first six years were my Hierarchical Select and CDN modules. I started those in my first year or so of using Drupal (which coincides with my first year at university). They led to a summer job for Mollom, working with/for Dries remotely — vastly better than counting sandwiches or waiting tables!

It also resulted in me freelancing during the school holidays: the Hierarchical Select module gained many features thanks to agencies not just requesting but also sponsoring them. I couldn’t believe that companies thousands of kilometers away would trust a 21-year old to write code for them!