As part of our work to make Drupal 8 the leading CMS for developer portals, we are implementing a mechanism to import the OpenAPI (formerly known as Swagger) specification format. This is a crucial feature not only for dedicated developer portals, but also for all Drupal sites that are exposing an API. Now that it has become much easier to create a RESTful API service in Drupal 8, the next step is to make it more straightforward to create its API reference documentation. That is why we think our work will be useful for site builders, and not just for technical writers and API product owners.

Swagger is a REST API documentation tool, it provides a specification language for describing the APIs and also a set of support tools. One of those tools is Swagger UI, which generates an... Read more

Traditionally CMSs use SQL databases that are really fast when you need all the information stored together in a record row, but are a bad fit when you need to search for relationship patterns that are not already stored together in your database. A significant performance penalty is incurred for every additional table that needs to be joined for a query. That is why SQL databases are notoriously bad at deducting relationships from datasets. Graph databases, however, are really good at this task.

In a talk we did at FOSDEM ‘17, Tamás Demeter-Haludka and I discuss potential application areas of graph databases in existing open source CMSs like Drupal.

We believe graph databases could make a big difference when used in key areas where traditionally CMSs would fail:

When a problem arises in today’s attention deprived world, we can’t expect our customers to go search for a solution in the documentation. Documentation sites can be complex, they often store the documentation for multiple products and each of the products might have many features. In the best case you will frustrate your customer, in the worst case they might simply give up before finding the information they need.

That is why we developed the Walkhub Help Widget to help site owners guide their visitors to the right documentation content - right inside an application or web site. The simplest way to try out WalkHub Help Widgets is embedthedocs.com, but you can also set up your own widget creation interface easily if you have basic knowledge of web development. In this blogpost... Read more

Part 1: Architecture summary
Part 2: Installation & Configuration
Part 3: Video & Playlist Management
Part 4: Including Videos & Playlists in Drupal content

In this multi-part blog series, we are covering the various aspects of the new Brightcove Video Connect module for Drupal 8. Part 1 consisted of an Architecture summary and discussed the Technical approach used during the development of the module. Part 2 detailed the Installation & Configuration steps required to get the module up and running properly. This third part illustrates the management of Videos & Playlists and discusses some of the changes compared to the Drupal 7 version of the module.

Once videos have been “imported” from Brightcove or uploaded... Read more