Decoupled Drupal: Headless, Hybrid and Classic

The web development landscape, especially on the frontend, is rapidly evolving.  By the time Drupal 8 is released, it will include frontend code that is over four years old (Backbone, anyone!).  Over the past year, a Headless Drupal movement has sprouted, with its followers determined to combine Drupal 7 and 8's excellent RESTful services with cutting-edge frontend frameworks to create fast-loading, modern, interactive user interfaces for browsers, mobile apps, TVs, and whatever comes next.

This session will explore the different varieties of Drupal-powered webapps: Headless Drupal, where the webapp is the entire frontend that the user experiences; and hybrid, where webapps are embedded within Drupal page-loads.  We will focus on real-world examples, including our experience redesigning our own website as an angular app powered by a Drupal 8 ReSTful API (a Headless Drupal implementation), and Angular Media, module/webapp aimed at improving the a Drupal 7 backend media interface (hybrid Drupal).   We will introduce the audience to Soar Headless, an Drupal module an Angular app boilerplate to kickstart development.  Finally, we will expore situations where decoupled Drupal doesn't make sense, where "Classic Drupal" can still shine.