HyperDrupal

HyperDrupal is a distribution providing the basis for building a REST API server using Drupal 8. It derives its name from the use of hypermedia API responses, allowing REST API clients to traverse the API in much the same way a human traverses a web page.

The promise of a mature REST implementation is the API equivalent of a wiki walk, and Drupal 8 is poised to be the perfect framework for realizing this potential. Thanks to Web Services and Context in Core Initiative spearheaded by Larry Garfield, we now have a core REST module with an optional HAL module that allows us to format responses in one of the leading generic hypermedia types available (see the specification). We have also included Guzzle to serve as our HTTP client for consuming remote web services.

This distribution will be a sandbox of sorts for proving the use case of Drupal 8 as a REST API server and contributing to the development of tools that extend the functionality of core as both a server and client.

What does it do?

HyperDrupal installs the Standard distribution of Drupal with the exception of a few modules (e.g. Contact, Edit, History, etc.). It provides some default configuration during installation, installs the core Serialization, REST, and HAL modules, and installs the contributed module Devel to facilitate testing the API in the browser.

Additional reading

My personal bibliography on the topic may be found in the readme of my Toward HyperDrupal presentation repository.