Problem/Motivation

Sometimes a contrib module wants to guarantee access to a certain REST resource (some entity type, usually), in a particular format, with a particular authentication mechanism. However, the REST module requires configuration to be created for that, but that means it can be modified by the site owner. Which means the expectations of the contrib module can be violated.

One might say Well, why don't those modules simply provide their own controller?, to which the answer would be: The problem is that they then must duplicate large portions of \Drupal\rest\RequestHandler to handle serialization+cacheability correctly, and they'd also need to duplicate portions of EntityResource. The point is to rely on the REST module's test coverage/improvements/bug fixes, and to not duplicate all that.

Proposed resolution

Enable this use case by allowing the route to specify the plugin to use. This would decouple \Drupal\rest\RequestHandler() from RestResourceConfig config entities.

Remaining tasks

TBD

User interface changes

None.

API changes

None.

Data model changes

None.

Comments

Wim Leers created an issue. See original summary.

wim leers’s picture

wim leers
Location Ghent 🇧🇪🇪🇺
commented
Category: Task » Feature request
wim leers’s picture

wim leers
Location Ghent 🇧🇪🇪🇺
commented
Issue tags: +Contributed project soft blocker
Related issues: +#2822302: Refactor Acquia Content Hub's "GET entity" route/logic

#2822302: Refactor Acquia Content Hub's "GET entity" route/logic would benefit from this.

wim leers’s picture

wim leers
Location Ghent 🇧🇪🇪🇺
commented
Related issues: +#2575761: Discuss a better system for discovering and selecting normalizers

See #2575761-7: Discuss a better system for discovering and selecting normalizers and -8, it looks like the Schemata module also would benefit from this.

wim leers’s picture

wim leers
Location Ghent 🇧🇪🇪🇺
commented

Relevant: https://www.drupal.org/core/d8-bc-policy#controllers.

chi’s picture

chi commented

The problem is more general. I had similar thought recently choosing between Views and Controller. It's quite common that contributed modules and profiles want to preserve their content types, fields, rules, whatever from being broken by site owner.
I wonder if it is possible to implement some kind of lock for a particular configuration object?

Version: 8.3.x-dev » 8.4.x-dev

Drupal 8.3.0-alpha1 will be released the week of January 30, 2017, which means new developments and disruptive changes should now be targeted against the 8.4.x-dev branch. For more information see the Drupal 8 minor version schedule and the Allowed changes during the Drupal 8 release cycle.

wim leers’s picture

wim leers
Location Ghent 🇧🇪🇪🇺
commented
Title: Allow contrib modules to deploy REST resources by creating routes, removing the need for config entities in that special case » [PP-4] Allow contrib modules to deploy REST resources by creating routes, removing the need for config entities in that special case
Status: Active » Postponed

For us to support this, we first need sanity in REST's routing. So we need #2737751: Refactor REST routing to address its brittleness to be fixed first. I did a lot of work in that area in the past 2 months.

Since #2737751 has 3 blockers, this has 4 blockers: we need #2737751 to be fixed to be able to work on this.

wim leers’s picture

wim leers
Location Ghent 🇧🇪🇪🇺
commented
Title: [PP-4] Allow contrib modules to deploy REST resources by creating routes, removing the need for config entities in that special case » [PP-3] Allow contrib modules to deploy REST resources by creating routes, removing the need for config entities in that special case

#2472337: Provide a lazy alternative to service collectors which just detects service IDs landed, #2858482: Simplify REST routing: disallow requesting POST/PATCH in any format, make consistent has been rerolled and is now blocked on review. Once that's in, there's again one less blocker here.

Version: 8.4.x-dev » 8.5.x-dev

Drupal 8.4.0-alpha1 will be released the week of July 31, 2017, which means new developments and disruptive changes should now be targeted against the 8.5.x-dev branch. For more information see the Drupal 8 minor version schedule and the Allowed changes during the Drupal 8 release cycle.

Version: 8.5.x-dev » 8.6.x-dev

Drupal 8.5.0-alpha1 will be released the week of January 17, 2018, which means new developments and disruptive changes should now be targeted against the 8.6.x-dev branch. For more information see the Drupal 8 minor version schedule and the Allowed changes during the Drupal 8 release cycle.

wim leers’s picture

wim leers
Location Ghent 🇧🇪🇪🇺
commented
Title: [PP-3] Allow contrib modules to deploy REST resources by creating routes, removing the need for config entities in that special case » [PP-2] Allow contrib modules to deploy REST resources by creating routes, removing the need for config entities in that special case

#2737751: Refactor REST routing to address its brittleness has only one blocker left.

jeqq’s picture

jeqq commented

RELAXed Web Services contrib projects is a good example of the problem described in this issue (8.x-1.x branch). It duplicates some code from REST core module, implements a controller and provides config entities to make possible the custom REST resources work. Also, a problem has been to correctly handle the cacheability, this still might not be completely and/or correctly implemented.

wim leers’s picture

wim leers
Location Ghent 🇧🇪🇪🇺
commented

What are your thoughts about the proposed resolution?

Enable this use case by allowing the route to specify the plugin to use. This would decouple \Drupal\rest\RequestHandler() from RestResourceConfig config entities.

Version: 8.6.x-dev » 8.7.x-dev

Drupal 8.6.0-alpha1 will be released the week of July 16, 2018, which means new developments and disruptive changes should now be targeted against the 8.7.x-dev branch. For more information see the Drupal 8 minor version schedule and the Allowed changes during the Drupal 8 release cycle.

wim leers’s picture

wim leers
Location Ghent 🇧🇪🇪🇺
commented
Title: [PP-2] Allow contrib modules to deploy REST resources by creating routes, removing the need for config entities in that special case » Allow contrib modules to deploy REST resources by creating routes, removing the need for config entities in that special case
Issue tags: +API-First Initiative

#2869426: EntityResource should add _entity_access requirement to REST routes landed, which means #2737751: Refactor REST routing to address its brittleness is fixed, which means this is also unblocked!

Now this is finally actionable, but how big is demand for this? 12 followers isn't nothing, but it isn't very much either.

Version: 8.7.x-dev » 8.8.x-dev

Drupal 8.7.0-alpha1 will be released the week of March 11, 2019, which means new developments and disruptive changes should now be targeted against the 8.8.x-dev branch. For more information see the Drupal 8 minor version schedule and the Allowed changes during the Drupal 8 release cycle.

Version: 8.8.x-dev » 8.9.x-dev

Drupal 8.8.0-alpha1 will be released the week of October 14th, 2019, which means new developments and disruptive changes should now be targeted against the 8.9.x-dev branch. (Any changes to 8.9.x will also be committed to 9.0.x in preparation for Drupal 9’s release, but some changes like significant feature additions will be deferred to 9.1.x.). For more information see the Drupal 8 and 9 minor version schedule and the Allowed changes during the Drupal 8 and 9 release cycles.

Version: 8.9.x-dev » 9.1.x-dev

Drupal 8.9.0-beta1 was released on March 20, 2020. 8.9.x is the final, long-term support (LTS) minor release of Drupal 8, which means new developments and disruptive changes should now be targeted against the 9.1.x-dev branch. For more information see the Drupal 8 and 9 minor version schedule and the Allowed changes during the Drupal 8 and 9 release cycles.

Version: 9.1.x-dev » 9.2.x-dev

Drupal 9.1.0-alpha1 will be released the week of October 19, 2020, which means new developments and disruptive changes should now be targeted for the 9.2.x-dev branch. For more information see the Drupal 9 minor version schedule and the Allowed changes during the Drupal 9 release cycle.

Version: 9.2.x-dev » 9.3.x-dev

Drupal 9.2.0-alpha1 will be released the week of May 3, 2021, which means new developments and disruptive changes should now be targeted for the 9.3.x-dev branch. For more information see the Drupal core minor version schedule and the Allowed changes during the Drupal core release cycle.

Version: 9.3.x-dev » 9.4.x-dev

Drupal 9.3.0-rc1 was released on November 26, 2021, which means new developments and disruptive changes should now be targeted for the 9.4.x-dev branch. For more information see the Drupal core minor version schedule and the Allowed changes during the Drupal core release cycle.

Version: 9.4.x-dev » 9.5.x-dev

Drupal 9.4.0-alpha1 was released on May 6, 2022, which means new developments and disruptive changes should now be targeted for the 9.5.x-dev branch. For more information see the Drupal core minor version schedule and the Allowed changes during the Drupal core release cycle.

Version: 9.5.x-dev » 10.1.x-dev

Drupal 9.5.0-beta2 and Drupal 10.0.0-beta2 were released on September 29, 2022, which means new developments and disruptive changes should now be targeted for the 10.1.x-dev branch. For more information see the Drupal core minor version schedule and the Allowed changes during the Drupal core release cycle.

Version: 10.1.x-dev » 11.x-dev

Drupal core is moving towards using a “main” branch. As an interim step, a new 11.x branch has been opened, as Drupal.org infrastructure cannot currently fully support a branch named main. New developments and disruptive changes should now be targeted for the 11.x branch, which currently accepts only minor-version allowed changes. For more information, see the Drupal core minor version schedule and the Allowed changes during the Drupal core release cycle.

Version: 11.x-dev » main

Drupal core is now using the main branch as the primary development branch. New developments and disruptive changes should now be targeted to the main branch.

Read more in the announcement.