API

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
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.

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!

API