REST and Serialization in Drupal 8 (DrupalCon Portland Session Notes)

What is REST in Drupal 8?

• Accept header: "Accept: application/json" at /node/###

Four components of REST

• Base formats: JSON, XML
• URIs: URLs for a resource. Link Relation: link to other entities
• Media Type: application/json, application/hal+json (_links and _embedded), application/vnd.github+json
• HTTP Method: GET, POST, PATCH, DELETE. PATCH instead of PUT...update some fields, but not the whole entity

What is in Drupal 7 core right now?

• Services module
• Endpoint concept and custom URL paths
• Caters to RPC and SOAP
• drupal_form_submit() for write operations
• Only covers nodes, comments, users
• No hypermedia controls
• RESTWS Module
• Exposes all entities
• No endpoints

What is in Drupal 8 core right now?

• RESTful Web Servcies module
• Serialization module
• HAL module
• POST, GET, PATCH, DELETE
• Access control on the field and entity level
• Authentication: not handled by REST module
• User object, permissions applied with standard session cookie.
• Views support - Display plugin for REST

Formats in Core

• JSON
• XML (kinda)
• Hypertext Application Lanaguage (HAL)

Symfony Serializer

• $serializer->serialize($object, $format, $context);
• You can write normalizer to change things like "field_image: 5" to "field_image: 'foo/bar.png'"

Hypermedia Controls

• Allows server to change URL schemes without breaking clients
• Discoverability: by returning the possible links, client developers can find out about new URIs.