Headless Drupal: What Does It Mean for Customers?

The term "headless" or "decouple" Drupal means that the system part responsible for the formation and display of information to the user is separated. With this approach, Drupal does not display a ready-made page in the form of HTML-code but uses the REST-service to generate a response to the user in JSON, HAL, XML formats.

It is possible to use this CMS as a back-end for a drupal mobile app and for the development of various web apps with complex logic for processing user data. Here are more fields of application:

• When creating sites with a large number of forms and a dynamic web interface that actively interacts with users (social networks, CRM systems, chats, etc.);
• To work together or exchange data with other web services;
• When you need to organize a reliable system for creating, storing, and managing data with the ability to receive information from any device.

Advantages of Using Decouple Drupal

Here are the most essential benefits appreciated by Drupal users.

• The load on the webserver is reduced

Since the theme layer is not used, Drupal is not fully loaded. This allows you to save a lot of web server resources, while some pages can be processed without their participation at all.

• Accelerated back-end development

All you need is to create the necessary entities (content types) with the required fields, set up relationships between them, assign user roles, and you can start developing the frontend app using any framework.

• Selection of popular libraries

Modern Javascript toolkit will provide you with high speed and reliability of user interface development as you will get access to hundreds of their ready-made components and stop creating hundreds of templates on the Drupal site.

• Wide range of developers

In recent years, developer experience has also become an essential factor. The fact that there are now multiple ways to write interfaces for Drupal makes it easier to find people to work on projects. Moving to a JavaScript-based interface can solve human resource problems.

What Makes Drupal So Powerful?

This CMS makes it easy to implement a decouple application thanks to widely accepted standards such as JSON: API, GraphQL, and OpenAPI. However, only your technical requirements will define whether decouple Drupal is your next choice.

The crucial aspect of any decision when it comes to headless Drupal is the list of features needed for your project. Each project should start with a clear assessment of what is needed for the implementation and what needs to be achieved in the end.

In Conclusion

Drupal continues to be an ideal CMS for unrelated architectures, a great choice for traditional and decoupled approaches with features that go far beyond Drupal's competitors, i.e., WordPress, Sitecore, and Adobe. No matter what application you want to implement, Drupal always has a solution for you.

(Disclaimer: Devdiscourse's journalists were not involved in the production of this article. The facts and opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of Devdiscourse and Devdiscourse does not claim any responsibility for the same.)