An overview of Drupal front-end component integration methods

AN OVERVIEW OF FRONT END COMPONENT INTEGRATION METHODS IN DRUPAL Brian Perry DrupalCamp Asheville – July 11, 2020 http://bit.ly/component-int

BRIAN PERRY • Lead Front End Dev at Bounteous • Rocking the Chicago ‘burbs • Lover of all things components… …and Nintendo d.o: brianperry twitter: bricomedy github: backlineint nintendo: wabrian brianperryinteractive.com 2

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YIKES! 2020, huh?

COMPONENTS!

COMPONENT BASED DEVELOPMENT What is it? • Creating modular and re-usable elements • Building a design system, not a series of pages • Can use a pattern library for documentation and prototyping • Tools like Pattern Lab and Storybook 6

COMPONENT BASED THEMING Why Take a component-based approach? • • Efficient re-use • Write once, use everywhere. • Within a single project and even across projects (beyond Drupal even) • Decoupling front and back end development • • Theming doesn’t have to come last Living Style Guide / Pattern Library • Simplifies coordination between designers and developers / developers and developers. • Rapid prototyping • Design system source of truth Well isolated chunks of code 7

OUR EXAMPLE COMPONENT

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{{ title }} {{ platform }} {{ year }} {{ image }} {{ body }} {{ link }} 10

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GRID LAYOUT 13

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COMPONENTS IN DRUPAL

WHERE DO MY COMPONENTS LIVE? For the sake of this talk… Standard Drupal Components Integrated Drupal Components • Live in the default template directory • • May not require any additional effort to get data to display Live somewhere other than the default templates directory • Require some additional effort to get data to display • For this talk, I don’t really care how your integrated components get into your theme. • Could live in your theme • Could be external dependency 16

STANDARD DRUPAL COMPONENTS Building components that live in the traditional templates directory

STANDARD DRUPAL COMPONENTS May be right for your team or project. No shame necessary. • Build with Drupal (and only Drupal) in mind. • Take advantage of things that can be re-used in Drupal • Display modes • Blocks • Paragraphs • Layouts • Lose out on rapid prototyping advantages. 18

STANDARD DRUPAL COMPONENT {{ label }} {{ content.field_platform }} {{ content.field_image }} {{ content.field_year }} View mode: teaser {{ content.body }} {{ url }} 19

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GRID LAYOUT View: Games 22

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INTEGRATED DRUPAL COMPONENTS Building components that live outside of the traditional templates directory

COMPONENT LIBRARY / PATTERN LAB 25

COMPONENTS MODULE Creates Twig namespaces to access templates in non-standard locations 26

INTEGRATION APPROACHES Primarily fall into two categories Mapping Data In Code • Includes: Mapping Data In Admin UI • Includes: • Mapping in Twig templates • UI Patterns • Preprocessing • Layouts • Themes and starter kits • More likely to get out of sync with Drupal UI • More likely to break things like caching, Drupal functionality, etc. • Less likely to disrupt Drupal functionality • Potentially not as flexible 27

MAPPING DATA IN CODE

INTEGRATING IN CODE {{ label }} {{ content.field_platform }} {{ content.field_image }} {{ content.field_year }} View mode: teaser {{ content.body }} {{ url }} 29

MAPPING IN TWIG PRESENTER TEMPLATE Drupal template references template in component library 30

DATA MAPPING IN PREPROCESS Map in preprocess… 32

DATA MAPPING IN PREPROCESS …and use simpler include in Twig presenter template 33

HELPER MODULES Simplify Twig Mapping Twig Field Value • Get Partial data from field render arrays • field_label • field_value • field_raw • field_target_entity • Map just the data you want • May require additional caching considerations… Twig Tweak • Helpful twig functions and filters • Render views, blocks, regions, fields, entities and so on. • Render image with specific image style • Extract tokens from context 34

STARTER KITS AND THEMES • Simplify set up and provide default tooling • Some provide default components and helper functions • Various levels of opinionated • Examples: • Emulsify • Gesso • Shila • Particle 35

EMULSIFY DESIGN SYSTEM EXAMPLE • Same presenter templates • Different component location • Different component library tool 36

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MAPPING DATA IN THE ADMIN UI

UI PATTERNS MODULE Define and manage components in a way that Drupal understands • Define UI Patterns as Drupal Plugins • Use defined patterns with component friendly modules • Views, field groups, layout builder, display suite, paragraphs (requires field layout or display suite) • Configure data mappings in the UI • Optional Pattern Library page exposed in Drupal • Also allows Drupal to: • Preprocess patterns • Render patterns programmatically 40

{{ title }} {{ platform }} {{ image }} {{ year }} Pattern: container {{ body }} {{ link }} 41

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UI PATTERNS VIEWS 45

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LAYOUTS {{ region: title }} {{ region: platform }} {{ region: image }} {{ region: year }} Layout: container {{ region: body }} {{ region: link }} 47

LAYOUTS AND LAYOUT BUILDER 48

LAYOUTS AND LAYOUT BUILDER 49

LAYOUTS AND LAYOUT BUILDER Add ‘container’ section for teaser layout 50

LAYOUTS AND LAYOUT BUILDER Challenges: • For full layout builder functionality, need to retain container and region attributes • Need to be able to addClass and attributes functions in Pattern Library • Some components might not be practical for visual field mapping • Layout Builder UI introduces additional markup that may conflict with your component 51

COMPONENT DEFINITION APPROACHES Manual Definition • Define component in code so that Drupal becomes aware of it. • Likely requires some amount of duplication between Drupal and component library Automatic Discovery • Drupal module automatically discovers components from component library and makes them available to Drupal. • Emerging/experimental concept. • Expects a particular convention and thus won’t work with all component libraries. 52

AUTOMATIC DISCOVERY

UI PATTERNS PATTERN LAB Automatically create UI Patterns from your pattern library… really. • End result same as previous UI Patterns Example • No redundant ui_patterns.yml file necessary • Some limitations • Requires yml or json file with pattern data • Requires specific approach to nested components. 54

LAYOUTS FROM PATTERN LAB Automatically create Drupal Layouts from your pattern library… really. • No explicitly defined layout necessary • Use with Layout Builder • Can select default field wrappers or only content (similar to UI Patterns) • Early - many limitations • Need to work around Pattern Lab 3 not working with html.twig extension • Open issues with Layout Builder drag and drop. 55

PATTERNKIT Combines aspects of manual definition and automatic discovery • Requires creating schema definition file (which has potential applications outside of Drupal) • Automatically derives blocks from pattern library components • Supports a specific set of field types • Token support in D7 but not yet D8 56

PATTERNKIT PATTERN DISCOVERY 57

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PRE-PACKAGED COMPONENT SOLUTIONS

BOLT DESIGN SYSTEM Ready to use web-components • Full design system • Selectively require components. 61

COMPONY Component distribution system • Combines a theme, Gulp workflow and components. • Download existing components or create your own • Not Composer / NPM driven 62

SINGLE FILE COMPONENTS Drupal components with Vue style syntax • Use like any template • Automatically generates library definitions • Derive Blocks and Layouts with Annotations • Provides component library • Doesn’t really solve integration problem • Does help with distribution and re-use. 63

COMPONENT WORKFLOW Present and Future

CURRENT APPROACH(ES) Leveraging a mix of approaches • Integrated components in a custom theme • Majority of twig/sass/js inside Pattern Library instance. • Defining component mapping in Drupal UI for lightweight components • Preprocess for components with heavy logic • Created preprocess helper abstract class – hope to open source in future • Project specific helper functions • Build components compatible with Layout Builder • Custom block types with limited use of Paragraphs • Limited mapping in twig templates 65

DREAM WORKFLOW Basically React (or insert the name of your favorite JS framework here) • Build fully packaged distributable components • Easily install them • npm install cool-component / composer require drupal/cool-component • Import them in code • import ‘CoolComponent’ from ‘cool-component’; / {% include ‘@components/cool-component.twig’ %} • Use them as I see fit • <CoolComponent /> 66

HOW DO WE GET THERE? We seem to have a lot of the pieces • Make it easier to package, distribute and use individual components • Track evolution of Web Components • Improve UI based component configuration process in Drupal • With specific focus on Layout Builder. • Evolve approaches allowing Drupal to automatically discover components • Keep building amazing looking component based sites using Drupal 67

Thanks to the many Drupal component ecosystem contributors!

FEEDBACK APPRECIATED 69

Q&A Brian Perry Lead Front End Developer Email: brian.perry@bounteous.com