Creating API-specific view modes for entitiesfor Drupal 8 , 9 , 10 , and 11

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8.x , 9.x , 10.x , 11.x

Introduction

In the context of headless Drupal, it's crucial to present data in a form that is optimized for API consumption. One effective way to handle this is by creating API-specific view modes for your entities. View modes determine how content is displayed and allow you to provide different representations of your entities tailored to specific contexts, including APIs.

What Are View Modes?

View modes in Drupal are pre-configured sets of display settings that determine how fields are arranged and presented. They allow you to create multiple ways of rendering the same content entity, depending on where and how it's being used. In the context of APIs, this means you can expose only the data required for your external applications, avoiding unnecessary information and reducing payload size.

Why Use API-Specific View Modes?

Utilizing API-specific view modes offers several benefits:

  • Customization: Tailor the data presentation for different API consumers, ensuring that each client gets exactly what they need.
  • Performance Optimization: Reduces data payloads by excluding unnecessary fields, enhancing API response times.
  • Simplified Data Management: Maintain consistent and manageable API outputs across various integrations.

Steps to Create API-Specific View Modes

  1. Define Your API Requirements:

    Identify which fields need to be exposed through the API for each entity type. For example, your blog post API might only need a title, summary, and tagged categories.

  2. Create a Custom View Mode:

    Use the Drupal admin interface to create a new view mode for your content types. 

    1. Navigate to Structure > Display modes > View modes.
2. Click "Add new view mode" and name it something specific to your API context, such as "API Preview".
3. Save your new view mode.
  3. Configure Entity Displays:

    Assign fields to your new view mode to control what data is included in the API response. 

    1. Navigate to Structure > Content types, and click on Manage display for your chosen content type, e.g., "Blog Post".
2. Select your newly created view mode from the dropdown menu.
3. Configure which fields to show, hide, or customize their format for the API response.
  4. Update API Endpoints:

    Ensure that your API endpoints utilize the custom view mode. For JSON:API, you might need to customize the module or use additional contributed modules for exact view mode selection.

Example: Setting Up an API View Mode for Blog Posts

Let's configure an API view mode for the "Blog Post" content type to only expose essential fields: 

1. Define API Fields:
   - Title
   - Summary
   - Tags
2. Create a new view mode named "API View".
3. Manage the display for "Blog Post" using "API View":
   - Show Title, Summary (use trimmed text), and Tags (as plain text or references).
4. Test and ensure the API endpoint reflects these configurations.

This targeted setup enables you to present streamlined data that caters to the needs of your API consumers.

Conclusion

Leveraging API-specific view modes provides a robust way to manage how your data is routed and displayed through APIs in a headless Drupal application. By customizing how entities are presented, you optimize both performance and the integration experience.

What's Next?

Our next lesson will cover making config entities available via APIs. This step will further enhance your headless Drupal application by allowing the exchange of configuration data, not just content data, through your web services. Join us as we continue to deepen your skills in deploying flexible and powerful headless solutions!