In the last several years REST has been the de facto standard for web services. However, there are several common problems when developing websites and digital experiences with the traditional REST implementations. Luckily, those issues have solutions, either complete or partial.

Modern web service specifications like JSON:API and GraphQL implement those solutions, although they differ slightly in their implementation.

In this tutorial we will learn about:

• The problems of traditional REST implementations
• Common solutions to those problems, and how JSON:API and GraphQL deal with them

By the end of this tutorial you'll be able to explain some of the common pitfalls of REST-based APIs, and how JSON:API and GraphQL address those issues.

A common use of Ajax is to alter a form by adding, removing, or updating parts of the form in response to actions taken by the user. The resulting altered form is still eventually submitted with a traditional HTTP POST request. For example, one might update the options available in a city dropdown field after someone has chosen a value in the country dropdown, or add an additional textfield for collecting a person's name when the user clicks an "Add another person" button.

In this tutorial we'll:

• Understand why certain types of modifications to a form require the use of Ajax
• Use #ajax in conjunction with a <select> field to demonstrate how to update a form with Ajax
• Learn about responding to user interaction with #ajax

By the end of this tutorial you should be able to use the #ajax attribute on any form element to respond to user actions and update the form displayed to the user with new content and options.

The Drupal core Views module architecture is built on top of the Drupal Plugin API. This allows site administrators to pick and choose from a list of options (plugins) to handle all the different parts of a view -- including what to display, what style to display it in, how to order the results, who has access, and more. In the Views UI, any time you're presented with the option to choose something from a list of options you're likely dealing with some type of plugin.

The advantage of a plugin-based design is that all functional parts of the Views module are provided in an extensible object-oriented way. The Views module defines the basic framework, and provides interfaces for other modules to implement, extend, and customize via plugins. Customizations to filters, fields, area handlers, sorts, and relationship handlers start with plugins.

In this tutorial we'll:

• Learn about Views plugins and the role they play
• Explore the different plugin types and their underlying classes
• Get a high level overview of the steps for creating a custom Views plugin

By the end of this tutorial you'll have a solid understanding of the different Views plugin types, what they are used for, and where to start if you'd like to define your own.

Now that we have some default simple configuration stored in a settings YAML file, let's utilize it in a form that our site administrators can use to update those values. We'll make use of some services and methods in Drupal's Configuration API in order to retrieve, update, and save simple configuration values with a form.

Plugin derivatives allow a single plugin to dynamically generate multiple plugin instances based on configuration or other data. This is useful for situations where user-entered data, or other dynamic configuration, might have an impact on available plugins. Or, put another way, any time you need to be able to dynamically generate plugin definitions.

In this tutorial we'll:

• Define what plugin derivatives are
• Understand the use case for derivatives
• Examine how core uses derivatives in order to demonstrate how you could write your own plugin deriver class

With filters, we can define query conditions and refine the results of a view. But what is a filter and how do filters work in Views? In this tutorial, you'll learn:

• How to add and configure filter criteria to a view to refine results
• What configuration options are available for filter criteria operators
• How filter groups allow you to group and order filter criteria to achieve desired results

By the end of this lesson, you should understand how to use and configure filter criteria in Views to refine the results of your view. (Note: We'll cover exposed filters in Overview: Exposed Filter Criteria in Views)

Network communication is essential when developing for a multi-tier web application like Drupal. Docker automatically isolates each container it runs, only allowing explicit ports to be exposed to the host OS. Docker Compose takes this one step further.

In this tutorial, we'll:

• Explain how Docker isolates containers
• Expose a container's ports to the host OS
• Re-map ports from the container to the host OS

To get things started in this series we'll install Drupal 7. We start in Drupal.org to download the code, review some important points to watch for when copying the files, then we show how to set up a database using PHPMyAdmin before we dive into the Drupal installer.

Additional resources

Installing Drupal 7 (Community Documentation on drupal.org)

Drupal has had revisions for a long, long time. However, they have often been under-utilized. Understanding how revisions work and how the Content Moderation module works with them is important to for being able to take full advantage of the systems features.

In this tutorial we'll:

• Explain what the different types of revisions are
• Understand when, and how, revisions are created

By the end of this tutorial you should have an understanding of what each type of revision is, how they're created, and how to work with them.