berliners blog - It's about drupal

Rebuilding a data-driven Drupal site: Separating data objects from pages

berliner — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 09:07:05 +0000

Rebuilding a data-driven Drupal site: Separating data objects from pages

In the previous post in this series, I described how we rebuilt our page templates with Layout Builder. I ended that post by mentioning that templates are less suitable when the page hierarchy must be derived from the data itself.

To explain that part of the rebuild, it helps to look at a more basic change. In the Drupal 7 site, an imported data object and the page that presented it were the same node, whereas the rebuilt site stores them as separate entities.

berliner Fri, 09/11/2026 - 11:07

Rebuilding a data-driven Drupal site: Page templates with Layout Builder

berliner — Sun, 06 Sep 2026 19:59:08 +0000

Rebuilding a data-driven Drupal site: Page templates with Layout Builder

In the previous post in this series, I described how we migrated existing page elements from Panels to Layout Builder.

Pages on this site are assembled from configurable page elements implemented as block plugins. These elements display data managed by an external system. Drupal stores their arrangement and configuration, but not the underlying data.

berliner Sun, 09/06/2026 - 21:59

Rebuilding a data-driven Drupal site: Migrating page element configuration from Panels to Layout Builder

berliner — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 15:39:25 +0000

Rebuilding a data-driven Drupal site: Migrating page element configuration from Panels to Layout Builder

In the previous post in this series, I described how we rebuilt our ctools page elements as block plugins.

That gave us the new implementations, but not the pages that had already been assembled in Drupal 7. Recreating them manually would have taken a long time and risked losing existing configuration along the way.

We did not want to migrate complete Panels displays. The rebuilt site had its own Layout Builder sections and layouts. We wanted to preserve the page elements, their order and as much of their configuration as the new block plugins could still use.

berliner Tue, 09/01/2026 - 17:39

Rebuilding a data-driven Drupal site: From ctools plugins to Layout Builder blocks

berliner — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 13:06:52 +0000

Rebuilding a data-driven Drupal site: From ctools plugins to Layout Builder blocks

In the previous post, I described why we chose Layout Builder and how Layout Builder IPE restored the frontend editing workflow we had used with Panels IPE.

With the editing workflow in place, we still had to rebuild the elements that editors placed on their pages.

The Drupal 7 site used custom ctools content type plugins for maps, charts, figures, lists and tables. Editors placed and configured these plugins, while the plugins retrieved the information and rendered the result. I will call both these ctools plugins and the block plugins that replaced them page elements.

berliner Thu, 08/27/2026 - 15:06

Rebuilding a data-driven Drupal site: Frontend editing with Layout Builder IPE

berliner — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 10:51:53 +0000

Rebuilding a data-driven Drupal site: Frontend editing with Layout Builder IPE

Back in 2022, we upgraded an existing brochure-style site from Drupal 7. The project has been running in different forms for many years and has accumulated a few architectural ideas that worked well, as well as others that needed reconsideration.

This is the first in a series of posts about things I learned while rebuilding and further developing that site.

Most of the information displayed on the site comes from external data sources. Instead of writing and formatting narrative content, editors select from a library of data-driven widgets. These display maps, charts, lists or key figures and provide a limited set of configuration options.

berliner Sat, 08/15/2026 - 12:51

Run post update hook repeatedly using drush

berliner — Thu, 09 Feb 2023 11:35:57 +0000

Run post update hook repeatedly using drush

Sometimes during development, you need to run the same post update hook repeatedly. Instead of resetting Drupals internal registry on already-run updates, we can also use drush to run a specific hook manually.

berliner Thu, 02/09/2023 - 12:35

Docksal: Misleading error with path access when not logged into docker

berliner — Tue, 10 May 2022 16:05:05 +0000

Docksal: Misleading error with path access when not logged into docker

If you see the error The path is not accessible in Docker when running $ fin up to get a docksal based project to run, it might be worth confirming that you are logged into docker.com by running $ docker login.

berliner Tue, 05/10/2022 - 18:05

Exporting variables in Drupal 9

berliner — Thu, 23 Dec 2021 10:48:33 +0000

Exporting variables in Drupal 9

I couldn't find information on this easily, so I thought it's worth putting this here.

The equivalent of drupal_var_export() / ctools_var_export() in Drupal 8/9 is Variable::export():

berliner Thu, 12/23/2021 - 11:48

Delete all tables in a MySQL database

berliner — Wed, 18 Dec 2019 17:27:07 +0000

Delete all tables in a MySQL database

Quick and dirty on linux based systems:

mysql -u$DB_USER -p$DB_PASS -D$DB_NAME -h$DB_HOST -e "show tables" -s   \
  | awk \
    -v DB_USER=$DB_USER \
    -v DB_PASS=$DB_PASS \
    -v DB_NAME=$DB_NAME \
    -v DB_HOST=$DB_HOST \
    '{ print "mysql -u"DB_USER" -p"DB_PASS" -D"DB_NAME" -h"DB_HOST" -e \"DROP TABLE "$1"\""}' \
  | sh

berliner Wed, 12/18/2019 - 18:27

Repeating table headers in PDF downloads using headless chrome

berliner — Wed, 24 Apr 2019 17:09:44 +0000

Repeating table headers in PDF downloads using headless chrome

For repeating table headers across pages when creating PDFs with puppeteer and headless chrome, use thead and these CSS declarations:

thead {
  display: table-header-group;
  break-inside: avoid;
}

berliner Wed, 04/24/2019 - 19:09

berliners blog - It's about drupal

Rebuilding a data-driven Drupal site: Separating data objects from pages

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Rebuilding a data-driven Drupal site: Page templates with Layout Builder

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Rebuilding a data-driven Drupal site: Migrating page element configuration from Panels to Layout Builder

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Rebuilding a data-driven Drupal site: From ctools plugins to Layout Builder blocks

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Rebuilding a data-driven Drupal site: Frontend editing with Layout Builder IPE

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Run post update hook repeatedly using drush

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Docksal: Misleading error with path access when not logged into docker

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Exporting variables in Drupal 9

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Delete all tables in a MySQL database

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Repeating table headers in PDF downloads using headless chrome