The Web Services and Context Core Initiative (WSCCI) aims to transform Drupal from a first-class CMS to a first-class REST server with a first-class CMS on top of it. To do that, we must give Drupal a unified, powerful context system that will support smarter, context- sensitive, easily cacheable block-centric layouts and non-page responses using a robust unified plugin mechanism.
Be sure to read the roadmap overview.
Code can be found in the WSCCI sandbox.
Hot issues
Active issues where we need help:
- Drupal Kernel Patch: This is priority one, based on Symfony2.
- Use Symfony2 session handling: We'll need to improve Symfony2 a bit in the process, too.
- WebSockets: How do we do that in PHP? Or do we?
Key discussions
Important discussions for background:
Recent discussions
Machine Readable API Documentation
Hey everyone - I did a quick search and didn't find anything on d.o and g.d.o
Over in the Digital Strategy group we started talking about machine readable API listings http://groups.drupal.org/node/247253 and I was wondering if there's been any discussions or thoughts on how to do it with the Services module?
Edited: Added the right groups I forgot the first time. (Services and WSSCI)
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Case Studies for Use of JSON-LD in Client-side JS Apps
Following conversations with linclark at DrupalCon Munich, here are some examples of client-side applications and functionality that would interface with a Drupal 8 JSON-LD API. The goal of these use cases is to identify key requirements client-side application development might make on a JSON-LD REST API in Drupal. Specifically a focus here is where the linked data aspects of JSON-LD will be important (as opposed to just JSON serialization of internal PHP data structures).
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German WSCCI
It was a productive week in Munich! Of particular note, we have several new volunteers who have committed to working on various parts of the system as well as, finally, a clearer picture of how WSCCI and SCOTCH are going to communicate. (The people involved have always been communicating, of course; I mean where the code from WSCCI and the code from SCOTCH will interact.)
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Hard to do site builder usability testing
The work being done by Bojhan and others in this group, as well as within the Spark and other initiatives is simply amazing. It will undoubtedly lead to better UX and usability for especially those that will work with content.
As a site builder I am very eager to be able to get more involved in this work. Personally I am most interested in helping to test the usability and UX when constructing these editing interfaces, and provide feedback on that. Especially since it is those interfaces I as a site builder will be using the most in my work.
Read moreJSON-LD serialization: DrupalCon discussion
In the meeting at DrupalCon Munich in the Coder's Lounge (Weds, Aug 21), we agreed to the following basic structure for JSON-LD, using the language maps to handle language versions.
{
"@context": "http://example.org/contexts/node/article.jsonld",
"@id": "http://example.com/node/1",
"title": {
"de": [
"Deutsch Titel"
],
"en": [
"English title"
]
},
"tags": {
"de": [
{
"@id": "http://example.com/taxonomy/term/1"
},
{
"@id": "http://example.com/taxonomy/term/2"
}
],
"en": [
DrupalCon: Discuss what we want from JSON-LD and whether it is supported
As I explained in What features of JSON-LD would we use in Drupal 8?, there are some issues that are not yet stable in the spec. Two issues which I raised on the spec were resolved, which made me feel comfortable moving forward with JSON-LD.
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Entity RDF: data descriptions for plugable serializations of Drupal entities (JSON-LD and more)
There's been lots of discussions on various approaches for serializing entities in the WSCCI group and with Drupal 8 feature freeze only a few months away, it's time to start coding. JSON-LD was chosen as a potential good candidate for serializing Drupal entities. One of the key features of JSON-LD is the ability to include a @context along with your data. This context describes the data present in the JSON document and is useful for consumers to understand how to best make use of the data.
Help understanding the Deployment use case
From what I've been able to gather, one of the two major use cases that WSCCI is targeting with its JSON-LD support is deployment.
I've been having a little trouble wrapping my head around how we want deployment to work. In this post, I lay out my understand of how it could work, some of which exploits the Linked Data part of JSON-LD. I'm hoping that those involved in developing deployment can help me understand if/where I've got it wrong.
I've drawn this up as a UML activity diagram, with different streams for the following actors (left to right):
<
ol>
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Current Status of using Services
After our awesome discussion today at the mid-west developers conference, here are the issues I'm running into trying to build a social media platform REST interface (for an iPhone app) with the current Services set up:
Read moreWhat features of JSON-LD would we use in Drupal 8?
We should review which features of JSON-LD we are likely to use in Drupal 8 and what their status is, as some are still under development.
Since many contributors do not have a grounding in linked data and haven't been involved in the JSON-LD selection process, I start with the basics, which are pretty stable. I then then move on to the parts of the spec that are fluctuating.
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