Posted by drozas on October 3, 2012 at 9:14am
Hello everyone,
I am very happy to announce that our session proposal for the Drupalcamp Spain 2012 has been accepted: http://2012.drupalcamp.es/es/sesiones/automating-drupal-development-patt...
The session is scheduled for Saturday the 20th of October at 11am, the whole calendar can be found here: http://2012.drupalcamp.es/en/calendario
Kind regards,
David
Comments
patterns vs features
hi im looking for discussion on patterns vs features. looks like there is some overlap in form and function. thank you.
Patterns vs Features
Hello Laurence,
Yes, that is a very interesting topic. Both modules address the same problem: configuration management in Drupal. But the approach to solve it is quite different specially in two aspects:
- Patterns uses only the Form API to manage the configuration, Features uses (as far as I know) modules specific APIs such as Views API.
- Storage: Features stores the configuration in Drupal modules, Patterns stores it in files that can have several different formats (YAML, XML, PHP arrays), in fact the architecture is decoupled so there is not a direct dependency on any format/parser.
I think it would be very interesting to discuss both architectural approaches and maybe try to combine them, so we could have the advantages and disadvantages of both in the future.
There is a Configuration Management Initiative for Drupal 8 at http://groups.drupal.org/build-systems-change-management/cmi
Kind regards,
David
Configuration management
The CM management for Drupal 8 is being backported to D7 in the CM module, and (apparently) features is going to be re-written on top of it. From what I understand (so far) Patterns looks more suited to the configuration management use case and source control than Features (in its present form as it was not intended for CM). Patterns may already provide some of the solutions proposed Features/CM integration.
I am not a contributer on either project, but am trying to grasp the "bigger picture" (and problems).
Thanks for the answer
Thanks for the answer David.
I just want to add that Patterns can use also module specific apis, besides the Form API. In fact, it can be any function. You specify that in the Patterns component.
One of the advantages of using the Form API, is that you get validation for free. On the other hand, its performance would be slower as compared to a custom api.