Create a Basic RESTful Web Service in Drupal 8

Disclaimer: Drupal 8 is still in a very early stage. Therefore, some examples or content in this article is subject to change without notice. I will be using the Drupal 8.0-alpha10 package that you can find here.

My girlfriend and I (like most everyone really) are always looking for ideas about what to eat. We tried a lot of recipes over the years and couldn’t figure out a good way to file them for future use.

We finally took the time and created a little website to expose all the recipes we loved, and we did it through a simple web service. It was the perfect time to try the new Drupal 8 web services!

Step 1

Install Drupal 8 using the standard profile. (Please use alpha 10 release)

Step 2

Go to “/admin/modules” and activate the RESTful Web Services and the Serialization module.

Step 3

Create your recipe content type with all the fields you want to see displayed on the front-end.

Step 4

In “admin/people/permissions” add “Access GET on content resource” so an anonymous user will be able to access the content.

Step 5

Now we need to create the view that will serve the web service (this is the interesting part!).

1. Create a new view with a REST export display
2. Make sure the format is “Serializer” and in the settings check the “json” option
3. Add random sort criteria so the web service would randomize the result sent to the user
4. Change the path to “/recipe/”
5. Save the view

Step 6

Point your web browser to yourdomain.com/recipe/ and enjoy the beautiful json output!

Final thoughts

This a was a quick overview of the potential of Drupal 8 web services. Of course, with the power of views, one can even expose any entities to a RESTful json representation without even typing one line of code (this could be even more powerful with the use of the oauth module for authentification).

I can see Drupal 8 becoming a one-stop shop for any company looking to implement a quick and easy web service.