Minimal yet powerfull config file based features-like toolkit for Drupal 7.
It works by building a fully featured AST composed of typed nodes representing your configuration file, then browsing the tree and executing code over it.
Let's assume you are working on a custom blog module:
sites/all/modules/myblog/
myblog.module
myblog.info
myblog.yml
Contents of the myblog.info file:
name = My blog feature
description = Very simple blog feature for my site.
core = 7.x
usync[] = myblog.yml
Contents of the myblog.yml file:
field:
blog_image:
label: Post photo
type: image
entity:
blog_post:
blog:
name: Blog post
field:
blog_image: true
body: true
view:
node:
blog_post:
default:
post_image:
type: image
settings:
image_style: thumbnail
body: true
teaser:
blog_image:
type: image
settings:
image_style: thumbnail
body:
type: text_summary_or_trimmed
settings:
trim_length: 200
> drush usync-list
Module Source
myblog myblog.yml
There is three alternative syntaxes for this use case.
Show a tree of everything declared by the myblog module:
> drush usync-tree --source=myblog:
Show a tree of the myblog.yml file declared by the myblog module:
> drush usync-tree --source=myblog:myblog.yml
Show a tree of the myblog.yml file accessing it directly:
> drush usync-tree --source=sites/all/modules/myblog/myblog.yml
Note that the --source parameter will be the same for all drush commands of this module, which means you can work directly on files without those needing to be defined by a specific module.
Output for the sample file should be:
+ field.blog_image
+ field.body
+ entity.node.post.field.blog_image
+ entity.node.post.field.body
+ entity.node.post
+ view.node.blog_post.default
+ view.node.post.teaser
Let's use the same source as upper, our 'myblog' module.
> drush usync-tree --source=myblog: \
--match=entity.node.%
+ entity.node.post
Matching rules are the following:
-
Words will match node names strictly
-
% wildcard will match any name
Now that you are experienced users of the --source and --match parameters you can proceed to Drupal injection. Just replace the usync-tree command by usync-run using the same parameters and it will work.
For example, inject everything which is in the file:
> drush usync-tree --source=myblog:
Once everything is injected, you can proceed to partial updates, for example revert all the view modes:
> drush usync-tree --source=myblog:
--match=view.node.blog_post.%
Why not. Features is slow to revert, features need to be configured via the UI, and features are not easy to modify manually, features may bring weird conflicts, and features don't know what to do when there is an error and get broken. You can't define things easily, you can make objects inherit from each other one, and features uses CTools, supports Views, and push forward very bad practices. Drupal Way is unperformant, unperforming, and I needed something to write things faster and make things run faster.
Why not, and you can use plain old PHP arrays instead if you don't like it. It will work like a charm.
I'm not your mamma, if you like to click, use features. Choice is yours. Oh and it's an experimental, unfinshed product, so I would be you, I wouldn't use it.