Configuration in Drupal 8: tips and examples for developers

In one of the recent blog posts by our developer, we offered you Drupal 8 development tips. Today, we’ll discuss working with configuration in Drupal 8. Real profit for Drupal developers by the same author. Enjoy! 😉

Drupal 8 offers a new configuration data saving system. It is useful for Drupal developers because it facilitates configuration import and export.

The configuration by default comes with modules and themes and is saved in YAML files (eg: image.settings.yml), and when the module or the theme is enabled, the configuration is imported to the active configuration repository. By default, the active configuration is saved in the database. The Drupal 8 core includes the Configuration Manager module.

The Drupal 8 Configuration Manager module

This module provides us with a user interface for configuration changes import and export. Configuration Manager makes it possible to deploy configuration from one environment in another – provided that it is the same site. The site is identified with the help of a universally unique identifier (UUID). The Configuration Manager module eliminates the need for additional modules such as Features and Strongarm.

In Drupal 7, to move content type etc., you had to download Features, make settings, and now you just need to paste the copied configuration to get the required content type.

Configuration Manager enables you to:

• synchronize configuration;
• make one-time import/export;
• make full import/export.

Making configuration changes on a live site is not the best idea. The aim of the configuration system in Drupal 8 is to enable you to make various settings on your test site and move only the ready settings to your live site.

The Configuration Manager page can be found here Manage > Configuration > Development > Configuration management або admin/config/development/configuration.

Configuration import and export in Drupal 8

For one-time export form test to live site you need to do the following:

• select the Export tab (1);
• select the configuration type (2);
• select the required configuration (3);
• copy the configuration text (4)

For one-time export of the previously imported configuration, you need to do the following:

• select the Import tab (1);
• select the configuration type (2);
• paste the configuration text (3);
• press the Import button (4).

For full configuration export, you need to select the “Full Import/Export”(1) tab, then the “Export”(2) tab. After that you just need to press the Export(3) button. After these actions, the uploading of the archive with the configuration will begin in the browser.

To import the newly uploaded configuration, you need to do the following:

• select the “Full Import/Export”(1) tab
• select the “Export”(2) tab
• select the archive file(3) and press the Upload(4) button

By default, Drupal 8 saves configuration files in these folders:

• ‘sites/default/files/config/active’
• ‘sites/default/files/config/staging’

You can change the configuration saving place in the settings.php file. To do this, you need to go to

$config_directories[‘active’] = ‘your_path’ та $config_directories[‘active’] = ‘your_path’ and specify the required path.

Drupal 8 provides us with a powerful API to work with configuration via the code.

On the next step, I will show how to programmatically create, modify, and delete the settings.