The interest in creating decoupled/headless/API-first Drupal sites has been growing for a while. As the interest grows, and more sites are implementing this architecture, there is a growing list of articles and discussions about it. Essentially, with a decoupled site you have a backend that provides an editorial interface for creating and storing content, and an API for retrieving it. This is combined with one or more frontend clients that can display that content where and how you would like. Drupal is a great backend for these kinds of sites, and React is the most popular JavaScript framework being used for frontends. While Drupal and React are both well-established technologies with a wealth of documentation, the interaction between the two, and best practices around that interaction, are still developing.
There has also been a push for Drupal core to adopt a modern JavaScript framework with the end goal of improving Drupal’s user experience (UX). At this time React is the current leader in this initiative. So it’s not a bad idea for any Drupal developer to at least be familiar with what React is and why it has been taking the web by storm.
Lullabot Education (the company that runs Drupalize.Me) has been exploring the world of JavaScript in general, and React specifically, and we’ve been pulling together resources. As part of this process, we’ve put together a new site, React for Drupal, that curates the best of our findings. If decoupled Drupal and/or React are topics you want to learn more about and keep current with, this is a great place to start. We’ll also be keeping the site up-to-date as best practices emerge or change and we’ll be working to help fill gaps in the current knowledge and documentation.
We hope this is a useful resource to both the Drupal and React communities. If you have any suggestions or comments about what we’re covering and what’s missing, please let us know! Check out React for Drupal to sign up for regular updates in the future.
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