Project Operations

Operations other than testing involved in the creation, hosting, and management of a running Drupal site.

Invoking Ad Hoc Operations

Some of the most common use cases for any Drupal site are the basic operations of installation, running database updates, and clearing the cache. These are not difficult operations, but many developers appreciate the common shorthand a little grunt magic can provide.

To keep this flexible the new Operations system offers nothing out of the box, but facilitates creating lightweight commands or callouts to the shell for more advanced scripts you want easily run on the project by the entire team.

This should remind you of the Frontend & Theming Operations.

{
  "scripts": {
    "update": "drush <%= config.alias %> updatedb -yv && drush <%= config.alias %> features-revert-all -yv",
    "reset": "drush <%= config.alias %> registry-rebuild && drush <%= config.alias %> cc all"
  }
}

Here you see two commands defined inside the top-level scripts configuration.

• grunt update demonstrates running database updates and reverting all Features.
• grunt reset demonstrates a thorough reset of the file registry and Drupal caches.

The Alias and Profile is specified per the rules for Magic Configuration.

alias: The Drush Site Alias. This is computed as a helper for use in project operations, but is not yet applied as part of other tasks. Defaults to @<domain>. The environment variable to override is GDT_SITE_ALIAS.

Pre and Post Operations

Similar to npm run, the operations defined in your Gruntconfig will support pre- and post- variants. If the main script exists the pre-script will be triggered first and the post-script will be triggered after. This allows you to easily extend any project operation with separate grunt, bash, or other tasks.

For example, if you define a new script update, you may also configure pre-update and post-update.

Install settings

The install task will either install Drupal via the configured profile, or if a path to a database is configured, load this database:

To specify a profile other than the standard profile:

{
  "project": {
    "profile": "openatrium"
  }
}

to specify a database to load:

{
  "project": {
    "db": "path/to/project.sql.gz"
  }
}

project.profile The Drupal installation profile, this will be used to configure the behavior of the grunt install and grunt serve tasks. Defaults to standard. The environment variable is GDT_INSTALL_PROFILE

project.db If specified, this database will be loaded instead of running a site installation. If the file referenced is not present grunt install will fall back to a standard drush site-install.

Pre and Post Installation

The install task has a unique implementation of support for the pre and post scripts otherwise made available for themes and project operations. This allows you to implement simple directives or scripts to prepare for installation or perform non-standardized operations after the main installation routine.

Serve Settings

The Serve task allows you to run Drupal using PHP’s built-in webserver. This facilitates quick demos and low-overhead development for projects with simple infrastructure requirements. When using this task it will take over the terminal window.

grunt serve will not install the Drupal site. Run with grunt serve:demo to skip starting up watch tasks.

{
  "project": {
    "profile": 'project_profile_name'
  },
  "serve": {
    "port": 9043,
    "concurrent": [
      "watch-theme"
    ]
  }
}

serve.port: The port number to bind for the webserver. Only one service may occupy a port on a machine, so a project-specific port may be worthwhile. Defaults to 8080.

serve.concurrent: An array of grunt tasks to be run concurrently to the server. When run with serve:demo or serve:test these tasks are not used. By default they include ‘watch-test’ and ‘watch-theme’. If you use this configuration to add tasks be sure to include these as they will be suppressed by any configuration.