Drupal is a top-of-the-line and customizable content management system (CMS) that is commonly used to create websites and web applications. The system is built around a concept of modular and growing architecture, that makes it possible for developers to personalize and broaden the scope of the system. In this article, we will take a look at specific parts and layers of the architecture of Drupal in order to help you understand how this powerful CMS works. In this article, we are going to talk about what is Drupal architecture is and its benefits.
Table of Contents
Building Blocks of the Drupal
1. Core
The Core refers to the central component of the CMS system and, as any other CMS, contains necessary modules and libraries required for minimal operation of the Drupal site. The core is responsible for authentication, content, and other system management. It is intended to be light and fast in itself, so it does become slow when, for instance, many modules or customizations are done to it.
2. Modules
Modules are the building blocks used to enhance the features of Drupal further. There are three types of modules in Drupal.
- Core Modules: These are free and ready with Drupal focusing on the important functions like creating content, managing users and defining taxonomy.
- Contributed Modules: These are the modules that are developed by the Drupal community, they include such new features and functionalities that they may be downloaded and installed.
- Custom Modules: Built by site builders or developers to get the special needs that have not been addressed by core or contributed modules.
Users can enable and disable certain modules as the situation demands resulting in a lot of freedom when it comes to customization.
3. Themes
Themes determine the look of the Drupal site. They include files explaining and showing how the user’s content will appear made up of patterns, styles, and JavaScript. Each contributed module of Drupal takes centre stage away from the impressions of content. Developers change the designs of the site without changing the structures that text takes. These themes can also be adjusted or new ones created especially for the profile appearance.
4. Libraries
Many functional tools which operate within Drupal include libraries including PHP, JavaScript, etc. A dependency management tool called Composer manages these libraries to make sure the right version and ported libraries dependencies are resolved.
The Layers of Drupal Architecture
There are layers within the architecture of Drupal systems that carry out specialized activities for the system. Evaluating the activities of these layers can enhance your insight into how requests and content within the Drupal system are structured and delivered to end users.
1. Presentation Layer
The presentation layer is responsible for the generation of the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript that is relayed to the user’s web browser. It encompasses the skins, the global templates, and the preprocess functions that determine the output of content. This layer guarantees the presence of web aesthetic for the optimum user experience.
2. Business Logic Layer
This is where the actual system performance is as it incorporates all functional features and custom development modules that dictate the specific behaviors of the site. This layer takes care of tasks like, content generation, user login and out, as well as management of the workflow. This ensures that the functional aspect of the site meets the business objectives of the site, and which appreciably meets the needs of the end users.
3. Data Layer
The data layer describes the activities of storing and retrieving content data and also the configuration data. Drupal saves data in structured way in the form of database relational model (MySQL or PostgreSQL). In this way, the data layer hides the complexity of the database, and the developers do not have to write advanced level syntax of the SQL queries.
Caching in Drupal
Caching is one such aspect for which one can rely on Drupal since even in the most depressed circumstances, it would maintain the copies of the web pages and the data which would alleviate the excessive work load on the server. Drupal has other various kinds of caches – page cache, block cache, and entity cache. These caches improve content delivery speed to the users while improving the experience as a whole.
APIs in Drupal
Like other frameworks, drupal comes out with its powerful APIs that accomplish the task of communicating with other systems and services. For instance, with the help of the RESTful Web Services module, Drupal can be used to publish content in JSON or XML formats that are usable within external applications. Therefore, it is possible to develop headless CMS and integrate it with service providers through the use of this CMS.
Benefits of Drupal’s Architecture
- Modularity: Further advantages of working with this architect system of Drupal is accessibility achieved in the modular form. Additional or a new component will be included or taken out whenever there is the need in order to enable proper adjustments to be made in the site.
- Scalability: Concerned primarily with getting high traffic through complex site designs and architecture, Drupal caters for both small sized websites and even larger enterprise applications.
- Flexibility: Due to its separation of content management from content styles, there is very little effort needed when it comes to redesigning a site, as content remains intact. Such a degree of flexibility is most beneficial to sites which are required to be updated or redesigned many times.
- Community Support: Thanks to the power of the whole Drupal community, there is always a vast number of contributed templates and modules meaning that less effort is used by developers during development.
- Security: Security is built into the Drupal architecture. There are regular updates and a security group dedicated to making sure that sites defend themselves from vulnerabilities.
- Performance: Effective core and choice of modules helps to achieve good performance and performance remains high regardless of how complicated the site becomes.
Drupal Request Lifecycle
It is worthwhile to understand the Drupal request lifecycle for any developer interested in optimising performance or troubleshooting any issue. Below is a condensed synopsis of the stages that cater for processing a request:
- Initialization: The first step involves doing all the loading of the config settings and all other modules required by Drupal to run.
- Routing: The system interprets the URL and decides which responsible module and handler to use.
- Controller Execution: Appropriate action is taken, and an appropriate controller function is called with the request so that a response can be generated.
- Rendering: All information is made available, and the content reached is forwarded to the client side, where it is translated to HTML.
- Delivery: The last rendered HTML page is delivered to the user’s terminal.
Conclusion
One of the many advantages one can experience from using Drupal’s architecture is that it has a modular, flexible and scalable structure that can be applied in various web projects. With a slight idea of how components, layers and request lifecycle work, it will enhance your comprehension of this software. In particular, whether you are a developer or a site builder, overhauling Drupal’s architecture will empower you to construct robust and efficient sites that are built to meet particular purposes.