1 Introduction to Headless Drupal

Outline

When to go Headless
- Speed of Development
- Separation of teams/resources
- Same data, lots of different consumers
- Architecture Patterns
Architecture Patterns for Decoupled sites.

When to go Headless

Speed of development

Faster if you have a REST API in place.
Not always initially faster. A headless approach to developing a Drupal site can lead to gains later in a project.

Separation of teams/resources

Dedicated teams for building 'Drupal' resources, and dedicated teams for building rendering/presentation resources.
Lack of technical debt on teams. Focusing on a single set of tasks.

Same data, lots of different consumers

Building one backend that will be consumed with many different systems.
- TWiT.tv
- Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon
  - DrupalCon Austin Session on TSwJF Architecture
Separation of concerns
When the the Drupal presentation layer is getting in your way.

Architecture Patterns for Decoupled sites.

Architecture parts

Routing
- Clean URLs
Caching
Templating
Error Handling
Interactivity
Authentication
- Permissions
API Versioning strategy & implementation
API Documentation strategy & implementation

Patterns

Cache & Theme
Client Side templating
Static Site Generator
Drupal to Drupal

You don't have to take down your existing Drupal site!

You can add an API to your existing Drupal site and use it as a superset of the existing functionality.

Real world Examples

The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (Node.js + Backbone.js): / DrupalCon case study /via @vordude
Weather.com (Angular): / DrupalCon case study /via @DamienMcKenna
Radio France Internationale (Symfony 2): /via @slybud

For a bigger list of examples see this list

Headless Talks at Drupalcon LA

A roundup of some great Headless talks at Drupalcon LA

Headless Talks at NYCCamp

Here's a blog post about some of the Four Kitchens' Headless talks at NYCCamp