Personal blog of Yzmir Ramirez

Today we are talking about GraphQL, Drupal Decoupled, and What to do with them with guest Jesus Manuel Olivas. We’ll also cover CORS UI as our module of the week.

For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/486

Topics

• What is GraphQL
• How do you use GraphQL with Drupal
• Would you use GraphQL without a headless theme
• Do you need additional server requirements
• What are some of your favorite GraphQL modules
• What caused the change from v3 to v4
• What is meant by Drupal Decoupled
• What are the best use cases
• How do you handle caching and performance
• How do you handle roles and permissions
• Do you think AI has made decoupled more interesting

Resources

• GraphQL
• GraphQL Compose
• GraphQL Compose Preview
• GraphQL Compose Webform
• GraphQL Compose Fragments
• Swagger UI
• Custom Field
• Drupal Decoupled

Guests

Jesus Manuel Olivas – drupal-decoupled.octahedroid.com jmolivas

Hosts

Nic Laflin – nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi – epam.com johnpicozzi Scott Weston – scott-weston

MOTW Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz – mandclu.com mandclu

• Brief description:
  • Have you ever wanted to control your site’s Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (aka CORS) configuration, directly within the Drupal admin UI? There’s a module for that.
• Module name/project name:
  • CORS UI
• Brief history
  • How old: created in Sep 2016 by Sam Becker (sam152), a prolific module maintainer in his own right, though the most recent release is by Matt Glaman, who has been on this show and will need no introduction for many of our listeners
  • Versions available: 8.x-1.2 which supports Drupal 9, 10, and 11
• Maintainership
  • Actively maintained
  • Security coverage
  • Number of open issues: 2 open issues, 1 of which is a bug, and also has a patch available
• Usage stats:
  • 274 sites according to drupal.org
• Module features and usage
  • By default cross-origin requests to Drupal applications will be denied. Since Drupal 8.2 you can add a section to your site’s services.yml file to enable responses, and specify what headers, methods, and origins should be supported
  • This module provides a form within Drupal to control these values. This could be helpful if, for example, these values need to change on a frequent basis, or for less technical users who are experimenting with a headless architecture.
  • I should note that the bug mentioned earlier throws a fatal error in PHP 8, but is a simple fix. So if you want to try out this module, make sure you apply the patch.

Large tables can pose challenges for many operations when working with a database. Occasionally, we may need to modify the table definition. Since RDS replication does not use asynchronous for its replication, the typical switchover procedure is not feasible. However, the Blue/Green feature of RDS utilizes asynchronous replication, which allows us to update the table […]

MongoDB has long been a favorite in the database community and is renowned for its flexibility and performance as a NoSQL solution. However, MongoDB Inc. chose to close-source the code of its Enterprise Advanced Server and, on top of that, reduced the value of the MongoDB Community Edition by no longer adding enterprise-grade features to […]

Today we are talking about AI Autonomy, How it could help Drupal Development, and AI in the future with guest Jay Callicott. We’ll also cover AI Agents as our module of the week.

For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/485

Topics

• What got you interested in this topic
• What is meant by AI Autonomy
• You suggested in your blog post in the Drop Times that developers will manage AI can you elaborate
• AI coming for our jobs
• Drupal X
• Do decoupled sites have an advantage
• Is the future going to be all prompts
• Skill decay
• What would you say to a CEO thinking about replacing developers with AI

Resources

• Drupal is Great! Its Perception Might Not Be.
• The AI-Driven Developer: From Assistance to Autonomy in Drupal Development
• DrupalX
• Ethics of AI

Guests

Jay Callicott – drupalninja99

Hosts

Nic Laflin – nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi – epam.com johnpicozzi Scott Weston – scott-weston

MOTW Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz – mandclu.com mandclu

• Brief description:
  • Have you ever wanted to leverage AI-powered tools to get information about or change the configuration of your website? There’s a module for that
• Module name/project name:
  • AI Agents
• Brief history
  • How old: created in Aug 2024 by Marcus Johansson (marcus_johansson) of FreelyGive
  • Versions available: 1.0.1 which supports Drupal 10.3 and 11
• Maintainership
  • Actively maintained: that release was in the past week, and was part of the significant effort to get stable releases of the AI modules that are included in Drupal CMS
  • Security coverage
  • Documentation included within the module’s codebase
  • Number of open issues: 30 open issues, 7 of which are bugs against the current branch
• Usage stats:
  • 119 sites but I suspect that number will increase rapidly once people start using Drupal CMS
• Module features and usage
  • In AI terminology, an agent is a system able to interact with its environment, collect data, and use the data to perform self-determined tasks
  • The AI Agents module is a framework to provide agents that can perform a variety of functions in your Drupal website
  • It depends on the AI module that we had Jamie Abrahams on the podcast to talk about back in episode #468
  • The module includes plugins that provide three agents, namely:
  • A Field Type Agent that can create or edit fields using the Field API, or answer questions about the fields your site has defined
  • A Content Type agent that can create, edit, or answer questions about node types
  • Taxonomy Agent that can do the same for your site’s vocabularies
  • Anyone who saw the Driesnote AI demos from DrupalCon Barcelona or Singapore will have seen agents in action, in that example through interaction in a chatbot
  • Technically, the plugins are UI agnostic, however. So theoretically you could trigger an agent in other ways. But today, AI Agents power the AI chatbot that you can use in the AI recipe that is included in the recently released Drupal CMS 1.0
  • The AI Agents module also includes some submodules. An experimental form integration submodule adds UI elements to the interfaces for managing fields, content types, and vocabularies, an explorer submodule provides debugging tools, and an experimental Extra submodule provides agents for working with webforms and views. I have also seen a demo of some work underway to provide an ECA agent, so you may soon be able to get your Drupal site to build out ECA models based on the business logic you describe to it

What index will be used when you count all rows in a table? Well, the MySQL documentation provides a straightforward answer to this, quoting: InnoDB processes SELECT COUNT(*) statements by traversing the smallest available secondary index unless an index or optimizer hint directs the optimizer to use a different index. If a secondary index is […]

The increase of cloud-native technologies is transforming how we manage databases. Since I stepped into the world of databases and cloud-native technologies, I have encountered several initiatives aimed at developing and optimizing database operations in the cloud, and Kubernetes plays a crucial role in this shift through Operators. While the core concepts and techniques of […]

PostgreSQL is one of the most powerful database systems in the world. I have always been passionate about its great power, especially its modern SQL language features. However, that doesn’t mean everything is great. There are areas where it hurts. Novice users unaware of the problem might get into trouble, and I see such things […]

Topics

• What is Drupal CMS
• Are we ready for the release
• Drupal 7
• What can people expect
• Will there be a launch button
• If someone uses the one click install how will they know what to do next
• What new features are there
• If someone tries the trial how do they get that site on a host
• When will Experience builder be out
• Are any vendors going to provide Drupal CMS as a service
• What is on the roadmap
• How can people get involved

Resources

• Starshot initiative

Guests

Matthew Grasmick – grasmash

Hosts

Nic Laflin – nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi – epam.com johnpicozzi Scott Weston – scott-weston

MOTW Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz – mandclu.com mandclu

• Brief description:
  • Have you ever wanted to have one or more fallbacks within your Drupal tokens? There’s a module for that.
• Module name/project name:
  • Token OR
• Brief history
  • How old: created in May 2018 by Daniel Beeke (danielbeeke) of the Netherlands
  • Versions available: 2.3.0
• Maintainership
  • Actively maintained, current release appx 2 mo old
  • Security coverage
  • Test coverage
  • Number of open issues: 8 open issues, 3 of which are bugs against the current branch
• Usage stats:
  • 2,369 sites
• Module features and usage
  • After installing this module, your tokens can contain pipe-separated values, including a quote-enclosed literal string, and the token will return the first token or string that is not empty.
  • This allows your tokens to have fallback values. For example you could have a token grab an event’s start date, or show “TBD” if the field is empty.
  • The project page doesn’t explicitly say that a single token can have more than two token reference or string values, but it seems implied. If true, that would mean you could define a token that would grab from one field, look in a different field if the first one is empty, and return a string if neither field has a value.
  • Because Token OR uses pipe characters to delineate between values, the module currently doesn’t support pipe characters within string values. This is one of the open issues, but there is a patch available.
  • Previous guest host Josh Mitchell mentioned that he had never heard of this module until he noticed it is in the codebase for Drupal CMS, so I thought it would be ideal to talk about on this show, as an example of some lesser-known best practices that you’ll get out of the box when you start building sites on Drupal CMS.

Originally published on The New Stack. Cloud-related regulatory, security and financial issues prompt many to weigh the benefits of building GenAI on on-premises and hybrid databases. Generative AI (GenAI) has already shown its potential to reshape industries, promising to enhance productivity, take over operational tasks, and drive revenue growth. According to Deloitte’s 2024 State of Generative […]

When setting up data-at-rest encryption (also known as transparent data encryption) in Percona Server for MongoDB, one has three options for storing a master encryption key: Encryption key file on a filesystem, KMIP server, HashiCorp’s Vault. An encryption key file is only suitable for testing due to its lack of proper security. One can read […]