If you would like to join us please check out our up coming events on MeetUp. You’ll find our meeting times and, once you RSVP, remote connection information.

We frequently use these presentations to practice new presentations, heavily revised versions, and test out new ideas with a friendly audience. So if some of the content of these videos seems a bit rough please understand that is some of the point. If you want to see a polished version checkout our group members’ talks at camps and cons.

If you are interested in giving a practice talk, leave me a comment here, contact me through Drupal.org, or find me on Drupal Slack. We’re excited to hear new voices and ideas. We want to support the community, and that means you.

If you would like to join us please check out our up coming events on MeetUp. You’ll find our meeting times and, once you RSVP, remote connection information.

We frequently use these presentations to practice new presentations, heavily revised versions, and test out new ideas with a friendly audience. So if some of the content of these videos seems a bit rough please understand that is some of the point. If you want to see a polished version checkout our group members’ talks at camps and cons.

If you are interested in giving a practice talk, leave me a comment here, contact me through Drupal.org, or find me on Drupal Slack. We’re excited to hear new voices and ideas. We want to support the community, and that means you.

If you would like to join us please check out our up coming events on MeetUp for meeting times, locations, and remote connection information.

We frequently use these presentations to practice new presentations, try out heavily revised versions, and test out new ideas with a friendly audience. So if some of the content of these videos seems a bit rough please understand we are all learning all the time and we are open to constructive feedback. If you want to see a polished version checkout our group members’ talks at camps and cons.

If you are interested in giving a practice talk, leave me a comment here, contact me through Drupal.org, or find me on Drupal Slack. We’re excited to hear new voices and ideas. We want to support the community, and that means you.

If you would like to join us please check out our upcoming events on Meetup for meeting times, locations, and remote connection information.

We frequently use these presentations to practice new presentations, try out heavily revised versions, and test out new ideas with a friendly audience. So if some of the content of these videos seems a bit rough please understand we are all learning all the time and we are open to constructive feedback. If you want to see a polished version checkout our group members’ talks at camps and cons.

If you are interested in giving a practice talk, leave me a comment here, contact me through Drupal.org, or find me on Drupal Slack. We’re excited to hear new voices and ideas. We want to support the community, and that means you.

This month I gave a talk at SCDUG on encouraging creating testing plans for teams that have been resistant for any number of reasons. This talk is meant to help people argue for the value of testing, and help you create a testing plan that will save more resources that it costs. This was an initial draft of that talk that I’ll be giving a revised and improved version of at Drupal Camp Atlanta in September.

If you would like to join us please check out our up coming events on Meetup for meeting times, locations, and remote connection information.

We frequently use these presentations to practice new presentations, try out heavily revised versions, and test out new ideas with a friendly audience. So if some of the content of these videos seems a bit rough please understand we are all learning all the time and we are open to constructive feedback. If you want to see a polished version checkout our group members’ talks at camps and cons.

If you are interested in giving a practice talk, leave me a comment here, contact me through Drupal.org, or find me on Drupal Slack. We’re excited to hear new voices and ideas. We want to support the community, and that means you.

Launching a website can be a nerve-wracking experience, often times with developers working up until the wire trying to finish that one last feature. If only there was a crystal ball that would show you a vision of how your site would fare when the masses were set loose upon it.

Good news for you, there is! Load testing.

View the slides from this talk.

We frequently use these presentations to practice new presentations, try out heavily revised versions, and test out new ideas with a friendly audience. If you want to see a polished version checkout our group members’ talks at camps and cons. So if some of the content of these videos seems a bit rough please understand we are all learning all the time and we are open to constructive feedback.

If you would like to join us please check out our up coming events on MeetUp for meeting times, locations, and remote connection information.

We frequently use these presentations to practice new presentations, try out heavily revised versions, and test out new ideas with a friendly audience. If you want to see a polished version checkout our group members’ talks at camps and cons. So if some of the content of these videos seems a bit rough please understand we are all learning all the time and we are open to constructive feedback.

If you would like to join us please check out our up coming events on MeetUp for meeting times, locations, and remote connection information.

Chris Zietlow from Mindgrub, Will Jackson from Kanopi Studios, and I all gave short talks very cheap ways to host Drupal 8.

Chris opened by talking about using AWS Micro servers. Will shared a solution using a Raspberry Pi for a fully wireless server. I closed the discussion with a review of using Drupal Tome on Netlify.

We all worked from a loose set of rules to help keep us honest and prevent overlapping:

Rules for Cheap D8 Hosting Challenge

The goal is to figure out the cheapest D8 hosting that would actually function for a project, even if it is deeply irresponsible to actually use.

Rules

1. It has to actually work for D8 (so modern PHP version, working database, etc),
2. You do not actually have to spend the money, but you do need to know all the steps required to make it work.
3. It needs to honor the TOS for any networks and services you use (no illegal network taps – legal hidden taps are fair game).
4. You have to share your idea with the other players so we don’t have two people propose the same solution (first-come-first-serve on ideas).

Reporting

Be prepared to talk for about 5 minutes on how your solution would work.  Your talk needs to include:

1. Estimated Monthly cost for the first year.
2. Steps required to make it work.
3. Known weaknesses.

If you have a super cheap hosting solution for Drupal 8 we’d love to hear about it.

The Tome project has directions for setup with Docker, and for setup with Netlify, but they don’t quite line up with each other (I followed the docker instructions, then the Netlify set, but had to chart my own course to get the site from the first project linked to the repo in the second), and since I’m getting used to using Docksal when I had to fall back and do a bit of it myself I realized it was almost painfully easy to setup.

The first step was to go to the Tome documentation for Netlify and setup an account, and site from the template. There is a button in those directions to trigger the Netlify setup, I’ve added one here as well (but if this one fails, check to see if they updated theirs):

Login with Github or similar service, and let it create a repo for your project.

Follow Netlify’s directions for setting up DNS so you can have the domain you want, and HTTPS (through Let’s Encrypt). It took it a couple hours to get that detail to run right, but it eventually worked. For this project I chose a subdomain of my main blog domain: tome-netlify.spinningcode.org

Next go to Github (or whatever service you used) and clone the repository to your local machine. There is a generated README on that project, but the directions aren’t 100% correct if you aren’t cloning onto a machine with a working PHP environment. This is when I switched over to docksal, and ran the following series of commands:

fin init
fin composer install
fin drush tome:install
fin drush uli

Then log into your local site using the domain from docksal and the link from drush, and add some content.

Next we export the content from Drupal to send over to Netlify for deployment.

fin drush tome:static
git add .
git commit -m "Adding sample content"
git push

…now we wait while Netlify notices and builds the site…

If you look at the site a few minutes later the new content should be posted.

This is all well and good if I want to use the version of the site generated for the Netlify example, but I wanted to make sure I could do something more interesting. These days Drupal ships with an install profile called Unami that provides a more robust sample site than the more traditional Standard install.

So now let’s try to get Unami onto this site. Go back to the terminal and have Tome reset everything (it’ll warn you that you are about to nuke everything):

fin drush tome:init

…select Unami when it asks for a profile…and wait cause this takes a while…

Now just re-export the content and push it to your repo.

fin drush tome:static
git add .
git commit -m "Converting to Unami"
git push

And wait again, cause this also takes a few minutes…

That really was all that was involved for a simple site, you can see my repository on Github if you want to see all of what was generated along the way.

The whole process is pretty straight forward, but there are a few things that it helps to understand.

First, Netlify is actually regenerating the markup on their servers with this approach. The Drupal nodes, and other entities, are saved as JSON and then imported during the build. This makes the process reliable, but slow. Unami takes several minutes to deploy since Netlify is installing and configuring Drupal, loading the content, and generating the output. The build command provided in that template is clear enough to follow if you are familiar with composer projects:

command = "composer install && ./vendor/bin/drush tome:install -y && ./vendor/bin/drush tome:static -l $DEPLOY_PRIME_URL"

One upside of this, is that you can use a totally unrelated domain for your local testing and have it adjust correctly to the production domain. When you are using Netlify’s branching workflow for managing dev, test, and production it also protects your work that way.

My directions above load a standard docksal container because that’s quick and easy, which includes MySQL, but Tome falls back to using a Sqlite database since you can be more confident it is there. Again this is reliable but slow. If I were going to do this on a more complete project I’d want a smaller Docksal setup or to switch to using MySQL locally.

A workflow based on this approach might also struggle with concurrent edits or complex configuration of large sites. It would probably make more sense to have the content created on a hidden, but traditional, server and then run through a different workflow. But for someone working on a series small sites that are rarely updated, a totally temporary instance of the site that can be rapidly deployed to a device, have content updated, push out to production, and then deleted locally until needed again.

The final detail to note is that there is no support for forms built into this solution. Netlify has support for that, and Tome has a module that claim to connect to that service but I wasn’t able to quickly determine how to get it connected. I am confident there are solves to this problem, but it is something that would take a little additional work.

We frequently use these presentations to practice new presentations, try out heavily revised versions, and test out new ideas with a friendly audience. If you want to see a polished version checkout our group members’ talks at camps and cons. So if some of the content of these videos seems a bit rough please understand we are all learning all the time and we are open to constructive feedback.

If you would like to join us please check out our up coming events on Meetup for meeting times, locations, and connection information.

We frequently use these presentations to practice new presentations, try out heavily revised versions, and test out new ideas with a friendly audience. If you want to see a polished version checkout our group members’ talks at camps and cons. So if some of the content of these videos seems a bit rough please understand we are all learning all the time and we are open to constructive feedback.

If you would like to join us please check out our up coming events on Meetup for meeting times, locations, and connection information.

In November Kaylan Wagner gave a draft talk on using experiences in the world of online gaming to be a better remote team member.

We frequently use these presentations to practice new presentations and test out new ideas. If you want to see a polished version hunt group members out at camps and cons. So if some of the content of these videos seems a bit rough please understand we are all learning all the time and we are open to constructive feedback.

If you would like to join us please check out our up coming events on Meetup for meeting times, locations, and connection information.

Chris Zietlow presented back in September about using Machine Learning to Improve UX.

We frequently use these presentations to practice new presentations and test out new ideas. If you want to see a polished version hunt group members out at camps and cons. So if some of the content of these videos seems a bit rough please understand we are all learning all the time and we are open to constructive feedback.

If you would like to join us please check out our up coming events on Meetup for meeting times, locations, and connection information.

Since Drupal 8 was first released I have been frustrated by the fact that Drupal 8 batch jobs were basically untouched from previous versions. There is nothing strictly wrong with that approach, but it has never felt right to me particularly when doing things in a batch job that I might also want to do in another context – that really should be a service and I should write those core jobs first. After several frustrating experiences trying to find a solution I like, I finally created a module that provides an abstract class that can be used to create a service that handles this problem just more elegantly. The project also includes an example module to provide a sample service.

Some of the text in the slides got cut off by the Zoom video window, so I uploaded them to SlideShare as well:

If you are new to Drupal batches there are lots of articles around that go into details of traditional implementations, so this will be a super quick overview.

To define a batch you generate an array in a particular format – typically as part of a form submit process – and pass that array to batch_set(). The array defines some basic messages, a list of operations, a function to call when the batch is finished, and optionally a few other details. The minimal array would be something like:

    // Setup final batch array.
    $batch = [
      'title'    => 'Page title',
      'init_message' => 'Openning message',
      'operations'  => [],
      'finished' => '\some\class\namespace\and\name::finishedBatch',
    ];

The interesting part should be in that operations array, which is a list of tasks to be run, but getting all your functions setup and the batch array generated can often be its own project.

Each operation is a function that implements callback_batch_operation(), and the data to feed that function. The callbacks are just functions that have a final parameter that is an array reference typically called $context. The function can either perform all the needed work on the provided parameters, or perform part of that work and update the $context['sandbox']['finished'] value to be a number between 0 and 1. Once finished reaches 1 (or isn’t set at the end of the function) batch declares that task complete and moves on to the next one in the queue. Once all tasks are complete it calls the function provided as the finished value of the array that defined the batch.

The finish function implements callback_batch_finish() which means it accepts three parameters: $success, $results, and $operations: $success is true when all tasks completed without error; $results is an array of data you can feed into the $context array during processing; $operations is your operations list again.

Those functions are all expected to be static methods on classes or, more commonly, a function defined in a procedural code block imported from a separate file (which can be provided in the batch array).

My replacement batch service

It’s those blocks of procedural code and classes of nothing but static methods that bug me so much. Admittedly the batch system is convenient and works well enough to handle major tasks for lots of modules. But in Drupal 8 we have a whole suite of services and plugins that are designed to be run in specific contexts that batch does not provide by default. While we can access the Drupal service container and get the objects we need the batch code always feels clunky and out of place within a well structured module or project. What’s more I have often created batches that benefit from having the key tasks be functions of a service not just specific to the batch process.

So after several attempts to force batches and services to play nice together I finally created this module to force a marriage. Even though there are places which required a bit of compromise, but I think I have most of that contained in the abstract class so I don’t have to worry about it on a regular basis. That makes my final code with complex logic and processing far cleaner and easier to maintain.

The Batch Service Interface module provides an interface an an abstract class that implements parts of it: abstract class AbstractBatchService implements BatchServiceInterface. The developer extending that class only needs to define a service that handles generating a list of operations that call local methods of the service and the finish batch function (also as a local method). Nearly everything else is handled by the parent class.

The implementation I provided in the example submodule ends up four simple methods. Even in more complex jobs all the real work could be contained in a method that is isolated from the oddities of batch processing.

namespace Drupal\batch_example;
use Drupal\node\Entity\Node;
use Drupal\batch_service_interface\AbstractBatchService;

/**
 * Class ExampleBatchService logs the name of nodes with id provided on form.
 */
class ExampleBatchService extends AbstractBatchService {

  /**
   * Must be set in child classes to be the service name so the service can
   * bootstrap itself.
   *
   * @var string
   */
  protected static $serviceName = 'batch_example.example_batch';

  /**
   * Data from the form as needed.
   */
  public function generateBatchJob($data) {
    $ops = [];
    for ($i = 0; $i < $data['message_count']; $i++ ) {
      $ops[] = [
        'logMessage' => ['MessageIndex' => $i + 1],
      ];
    }

    return $this->prepBatchArray($this->t('Logging Messages'), $this->t('Starting Batch Processing'), $ops);
  }

  public function logMessage($data, &$context) {

    $this->logger->info($this->getRandomMessage());

    if (!isset($context['results']['message_count'])) {
      $context['results']['message_count'] = 0;
    }
    $context['results']['message_count']++;

  }

  public function doFinishBatch($success, $results, $operations) {
    drupal_set_message($this->t('Logged %count quotes', ['%count' => $results['message_count']]));
  }

  public function getRandomMessage() {
    $messages = [
      // list of messages to select from
    ];

    return $messages[array_rand($messages)];

  }

}

There is the oddity that you have to tell the service its own name so it can bootstrap itself. If there is a way around that I’d love to know it. But really one have one line of code that’s a bit strange, everything else is now fairly clear call and response.

One of the nice upsides to this solution is you could write tests for the service that look and feel just like any other services tests. The methods could all be called once, and you are not trying to run tests against a procedural code block or a class that is nothing but static methods.

I would love to hear ideas about ways I could make this solution stronger. So please drop me a comment or send me a patch.

Related core efforts

There is an effort to try to do similar things in core, but they look like they have some distance left to travel. Obviously once that work is complete it is likely to be better than what I have created, but in the meantime my service allows for a new level of abstraction without waiting for core’s updates to be complete.