Talking Drupal #474 - Revolt Event Loop

Nov 4, 2024

In this discussion, Alexander Varwijk, a Technical Architect at OpenSocial and gaming enthusiast, teams up with Martin Anderson-Clutz, a Senior Solutions Engineer at Aquia and Drupal module maintainer. They dive into the fascinating world of the Revolt Event Loop, exploring its importance for Drupal's core and improvements in managing asynchronous tasks. Topics include the impact on cron jobs, tackling test instability, and how event loops can enhance performance, especially for long-running processes. Plus, they introduce the IEF Complex Widget Dialog for more efficient content creation!

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INSIGHT

Event Loop Explained

PHP applications are typically synchronous, executing code linearly.
Event loops enable asynchronous task orchestration, like Node.js, improving efficiency.

INSIGHT

Why Drupal Needs an Event Loop

Drupal needs an event loop to manage asynchronous tasks introduced by Fibers, like in BigPipe and the renderer.
This centralizes task orchestration, improving efficiency and reducing boilerplate code.

INSIGHT

Benefits of Event Loops

Fibers allows asynchronous operations while maintaining the appearance of synchronous code.
Event loops coordinate these asynchronous tasks for performance and developer experience.

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Today we are talking about the revolt event Loop, what it is, and why it matters with guest Alexander Varwijk. We’ll also cover IEF Complex Widget Dialog as our module of the week.

For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/474

Topics

What is an event loop
Why does Drupal need an event loop
What will change in core to implement this
What problem does this solve
Does this make Cron cleaner and long running processes faster
What impact will this have on contrib
How would contrib use this loop
What does this mean for database compatibility
What inspired this change
Test instability
Why Revolt
Will this help with Drupal AI

Resources

Guests

Alexander Varwijk - alexandervarwijk.com Kingdutch

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi Joshua "Josh" Mitchell - joshuami.com joshuami

MOTW Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

Brief description:
- Have you ever wanted to use Inline Entity Forms but have the dependent form open in a dialog? There’s a module for that.
Module name/project name:
- IEF Complex Widget Dialog
Brief history
- How old: created in Mar 2020 by dataweb, though recent releases are by Chris Lai (chrisck), a fellow Canadian
- Versions available: 2.1.1 and 2.2.2, the latter or which is compatible Drupal 8.8 or newer, all the way up to Drupal 11
Maintainership
- Actively maintained, latest release in the past month
- Number of open issues: 4 open issues, none of which are bugs against the current version
Usage stats:
- 273 sites
Module features and usage
- When you install the module, your Inline Entity Form widget configuration will have a new checkbox, to “Enable Popup for IEF”
- Includes specialized handling for different kinds of entities, like nodes, users, taxonomy terms, and users
- Will handle not just the creation forms, but editing entities, and also duplicating or deleting entities
- Not something you would always need, but can be very useful if the form you want to use for entity or even parent forms that are complex
- I should also add that IEF supports form modes, so often I’ll create an “embedded” form mode that exposes fewer elements, for example hiding the fields for URL alias, sticky, and so on. So I would start there, but if the content creation experience still feels complex, then IEF Complex Widget Dialog might be a nice way to help