Discussion of the first open source iOS application for Drupal 8

1. Agenda
• Social - Drupal Meets iOS
• Introductions
• Overview - D8iOS by Michael Smith
• Demo by Vivek V. Pandya
• Q&A
• Drupal in a Can - Chingis Sandanov
• Closing Remarks and Giveaway - Tim
Tonight, we will discuss an open source iOS application for Drupal 8, the latest version of the popular open source CMS framework,

2. DiOS8
An iOS application for Drupal 8 ReSTful Services
Michael Smith and Vivek V. Panda, PikLips LLC

3. Why Drupal 8?
New Paradigm of CMS
Framework
Powerful Admin and DevOps
Structure, Tools, Ecosystem
Drupal is the 2nd Most Widely
Used Open Source CMS
Framework
I tried many content management systems — PHPnuke, XOOPs, DotNet Nuke. The reasons I chose Drupal was (1) it is really a framework as opposed to a package
(though there are many distributions), and (2) the developer community is really great. There are over a million Drupal developers worldwide.
In a way, they are like Apple in that each new release reflects the changing times and challenges the developer community. This release is a great example of that. It
overhauls everything from the way that modules and themes are created to the way that core was written. The good news for iOS is that Drupal now integrates
HTTPRequest into core.

4. Who Uses Drupal?
Many Schools
(https://groups.drupal.org/education-sites)
Many Governmental Agencies
(https://groups.drupal.org/government-sites)
Many Large Corporations
Many SMBs
http://topdrops.org/https://www.drupal.com/showcases
Drupal is a very popular open source framework, with over a million developers and over a million websites worldwide. In the Bay Area, many prestigious and high-tech
companies rely upon it.

5. What has been Missing?
Drupal Mobile Meant
“Responsive Design”
UX Built with Sass (CSS
preprocessor) / Twig (Templating
Engine) / Compass (Framework) /
Symfony2 (IDE)
Mostly a Server Driven UI (until
now)
Drupal was created as a vertically integrated web application, with extensibility built in using modules and themes. This PHP application has its roots in traditional, PC-
oriented HTML/CSS but has changed many times to accommodate new needs. The new version includes many sophisticated tools for developing responsive design
HTML/CSS/Javascript based user interfaces.

6. What is in it for an iOS Developer?
Drupal 8 ReSTful Interface
Works with Backbone.js,
Angular.js, PhoneGap (DrupalGap),
and iOS (via AFNetworking and
Kyle Browning’s iOS SDK)
Free, Full-featured Backend for
iOS App Development that You
Do Not Have to Code.
Headless Drupal
However, it has gone beyond HTML to provide a complete ReSTful interface in core. Before Drupal 8, this was only possible via modules which made dependency
management problematic. This change opens the door for mobile developers to use Drupal as a complete backend solution without the need to build it. Many call it
headless Drupal, but I prefer to call it faceless Drupal, as the brains of Drupal are still there and of great use.

7. How?
Drupal Manages Users, Security, and Content via Admin UI
You Design the UX and Get the Content via JSON Objects
All I/O is via the iOS SDK (including parsing) and AFNetworking
Clean Abstraction Layer Between Your App Work and Drupal
Drupal allows iOS developers to create community applications not unlike Facebook, Pinterest or Snapchat without starting from scratch. Drupal profiles all the social
connectivity support - user management, security, and content management. Its administrative services are very sophisticated, and it is readily extensible, with
thousands of modules available.

8. D8IOS Specifics
CocoaPods Dependency Managerment (https://cocoapods.org/)
Alamofire Software Foundation’s AFNetworking Library (https://github.com/
AFNetworking/AFNetworking)
Kyle Browning’s iOS SDK (https://github.com/kylebrowning/drupal-ios-sdk)
The D8iOS Application (https://github.com/PikLips/D8iOS)
Our application uses an SDK that creates a Drupal specific class of a library that abstracts Apple’s NSURLSession and NSURLConnection into a set of methods specific
to Drupal. CocoaPods dependency management keeps everything in sync.

9. Kyle’s iOS-SDK DIOSSession Class
Subclass of AFHTTPRequestOperationManager
Drupal Specific (a way to tailor NSURLSession for Drupal)
Maps to Entities, Nodes, Fields, etc. in Drupal
This combination is like a tailor made connection service for iOS to use Drupal.

10. DIOSSession Example
DIOSSession sendRequset method will add request parameters and headers as per the request type
(i.e GET, POST, PATCH or DELETE ). It will also sign the request with credentials if specified, then
add it to AFHTTPRequestOperationManager’s operation queue.
- (void) sendRequestWithPath:(NSString*)path method:(NSString*)method params:(NSDictionary*)params success:(void (^)
(AFHTTPRequestOperation *operation, id responseObject))success failure:(void (^)(AFHTTPRequestOperation *operation,
NSError *error)) failure
{
...
[localParams setObject:requestFormat forKey:@"_format"];
...
if ( _signRequests ) {
NSURLCredential *credential = [NSURLCredential credentialWithUser:_basicAuthUsername
password:_basicAuthPassword persistence:NSURLCredentialPersistenceNone];
[operation setCredential:credential];
}
...
[self.operationQueue addOperation:operation];
}
APIs are like a piano. All the keys are there; you just need to know how to play them.

11. APIs
DIOSEntity - CRUD
DIOSView - GET
+ (void) getNodeWithID:(NSString*)eid
success:(void (^)(AFHTTPRequestOperation *operation, id
responseObject))success
failure:(void (^)(AFHTTPRequestOperation *operation,
NSError *error)) failure {
[DIOSEntity getEntityWithName:@"node" andID:eid
success:success failure:failure];
}
+ (void) getEntityWithName:(NSString*)name andID:(NSString*)eid
success:(void (^)(AFHTTPRequestOperation *operation, id
responseObject))success
failure:(void (^)(AFHTTPRequestOperation *operation, NSError
*error)) failure {
NSString *path = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@/%@", name,
eid];
[[DIOSSession sharedSession]
sendRequestWithPath:path method:@"GET" params:nil
success:success failure:failure];
While the SDK provides all the basic services, access to AFNetworking is always there to extend the service to new needs.

12. What is the Catch?
Understanding Drupal Schemas
Dynamic Scenes
Syncing Mobile and Web Release Updates
For now — Drupal 8 RC Issues
Of course, there is still a learning curve and, frankly, Drupal is still changing. RC1 is solid, but integration issues remain. However, most of these will be resolved by the
end of 2015.

13. Demo Time!
Follow along at - https://github.com/PikLips/D8iOS
You can find the source code on GitHub, and a video of tonight’s meeting, including the demo is on YouTube - https://youtu.be/cZcxr_cSdCE .