With Decoupling Drupal, it is possible to separate the front end from the back end, thus enabling exposure of content to other front-end systems. At Bobcares, we offer solutions for every server query, big and small, as a part of our Server Management Services.

What Is Meant By ‘Decoupling Drupal’?

Decoupled Drupal, also known as headless Drupal, separates the front end, which is in charge of presenting or displaying content, from the back end, which controls the content, enabling Drupal to expose content to other front-end systems.

Websites must deliver the content across all devices in a user-friendly manner. So more websites are choosing this strategy and a robust content store in Drupal with this responsibility in mind.

Approach Behind Decoupling Drupal

NPR, with its Create Once Publish Everywhere (COPE) approach, is an earlier adopter of this approach. Decoupling their websites has proven advantageous for many big media companies, particularly when it comes to cross-platform content reuse. For instance, Netflix.

Let’s use an example to better understand the approach.

We must pull data from the Drupal site when creating a mobile app for iOS or Android. We investigate the methods for exporting data from a Drupal site, including Views Data-source, Services, and RESTful. Now that the Drupal site has JSON (or XML) endpoints exposed, we have the information our app requires. The website has now been decoupled successfully. This explains the approach well.

How To Achieve It?

There are two ways to Decouple Drupal. This includes:

1. Progressively Decoupled
2. Fully Decoupled

Let’s look briefly into each of the methods.

Progressively Decoupled

When using JavaScript as an additional layer to deliver a highly interactive end-user experience, progressive decoupling of Drupal is necessary. A JavaScript framework lies as a layer on top of the current Drupal front end in progressively decoupled Drupal. The former is only in charge of rendering one block or component at a time, though it might render the entire page body. The progressive decoupling model is a spectrum; the more editors can take control of the page through Drupal’s administrative features, the less of the page is committed to JavaScript.

Fully Decoupled

Fully Decoupled Drupal is of two types, namely:

1. Fully Decoupled App: A fully decoupled app involves completely separating the presentation layer’s concerns from the rest of the CMS’s concerns. In this method, the CMS will be the data provider, and a JavaScript application along with server-side rendering is responsible to render and markup, and communicate with Drupal through web service APIs.

   Fully decoupled Drupal apps attract the interest of developers who want more control over the front end and who have experience creating applications in frameworks like Angular, React, Vue.js, etc. despite the absence of critical functionality like in-place editing and layout management.
2. Fully Decoupled Static Site: JAMstack (JavaScript, APIs, Markup) provides an alternative to the difficulties in developing JavaScript. It facilitates the construction of fully decoupled Drupal static sites. The idea’s primary and most obvious justifications are better performance, security, and decreased complexity for developers.

[Need assistance with a different issue? We are available 24/7.]

Conclusion

To summarize, our Support team discussed the specifics of Drupal decoupling, outlining the strategy and methods for doing so.