Real World Drupal 8: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly!

Neerav MehtaRed Crackle, The Drupal Experts

http://redcrackle.comDec 17, 2015

Overview

• Pros and cons of Drupal 8 as compared to Drupal 7

• Is this the right time to upgrade your site to Drupal 8?

Pros

• Configuration Management• Twig– Easier to learn for themers– Automatic code quality since PHP tags are not

allowed

PHPTemplate vs Twig

PHPTemplate

Twig

PHPTemplate Mess: node.tpl.php

Entities

• Feature complete entities with common API• Drupal 7

• Drupal 8

Field Access

• Drupal 7

• Drupal 8

AnnotationsDrupal 7

Drupal 8

Pros

• All admin list pages are views• Quick Edit• Symfony– Good documentation

Cons

• Harder to learn for a Drupal developer with no exposure to MVC

• Harder to debug (will improve with experience)

• Breakpoint not possible in twig (although could be put in compiled version) or annotations

Time to Upgrade?• Depends!• Contrib modules are not ready

– Installation errors– Released Modules in D8: Workflow, Views Slideshow, Field Group– Dev Modules in D8: Token, Global Redirect, Pathauto, Field Collection– Modules not in D8: Profile 2, OG

• Migration path exists but is incomplete, has bugs and is being improved on– Supported: nodes, users, taxonomy, URL alias, standard date formats– Not Supported: Views, blocks (?), custom date formats

• Theme and custom modules will need to be developed from scratch.• Small informational site with only a few contrib modules => Yes• Medium to large site with lots of contrib modules => No

Q&A