Drupal is an excellent content management system. Nodes and fields allow site administrators the ability to create complex datasets and models without having to write a singe mysql query. Unfortunately Drupal’s theming system isn’t as flexible. Complete control over the dom is nearly impossible without a lot of work. Headless Drupal bridges the gap and gives us the best of both worlds.

What is headless Drupal?

Headless Drupal is an approach that decouples Drupal’s backend from the frontend theme. Drupal is used as a content store and admin interface. Using the services module in Drupal 7 or Core in Drupal 8, a rest web service can be created. Visitors to the site don’t view a traditional Drupal theme instead they are presented with pages created with Ember.js, Angular.js, or even a custom framework. Using the web service the chosen framework can be used to transfer data from Drupal to the front end and vice versa.

Pros

So what makes Headless Drupal so great? For one thing it allows frontend developers full control over the page markup. Page speed also increases since display logic is on the client side instead of the server. Sites can also become much more interactive with page transitions and animations. But most importantly the Drupal admin can also be used to power not only web apps but also mobile applications including Android and iOS.

Cons

Unfortunately Headless Drupal is not without its drawbacks. For one layout control for editors becomes much more difficult. Something that could be done easily via context or panels now requires a lot of custom fronted logic. Also if proper caching isn’t utilized and the requests aren’t batched properly lots of roundtrips can occur, causing things to slow down drastically.

Want to learn more about Headless Drupal?  Check out the Headless Drupal Initiative on Drupal.org.  And on a related topic, check out “Drupal 8 And The Changing CMS Landscape.“