Rob Loach .Net

Drupal 6 was released last week and everyone has been talking about how much greater it is than the previous release.  I particularly like how powerful the new menu system is, the new caching and performance features, and all the new AJAXy goodness.  But what is coming up next year in Drupal 7? This is a list of issues on Drupal.org that I am looking forward to see in the next release...

Add hook_file()

This would allow for a very nice File API, allowing us to interact with files at a new level.

Handle File Uploads in Form API

Right now when you have a file field in Forms API, nothing is returned when you submit it. It would be nice if Forms API handled some of that.

Descriptions for Permissions

This would allow modules to description their permission sets in the administration section.

Data API

Providing a common interface for all data types within Drupal (Nodes, Users, Taxonomy, etc).

Add PDO

This would severely increase performance, allow more database abstraction, and get more PHP5 goodness into Drupal.

External JavaScript files for drupal_add_js()

Make it easy to reference external JavaScript files through drupal_add_js() and then cache them.

Custom CSS and JS for Blocks

Adding CSS and JS for blocks through hook_init() isn't very clean, so this will fix that.

Examples for form fields

Having an example for every form field would allow better usability for Drupal.

Hook Registry

Increase performance in Drupal even more.

With these additions, and the implementation of a web service platform in core, we'll have ourselves a slick Drupal 7 release. What are you looking forward to in Drupal 7?

Now that Drupal 7 is open for development, people have started thinking about their personal battle plans for the next release. In the announcement, Dries mentioned the 11 wish list items that the community thought would make an excellent Drupal 7 release. I will be focusing, with Scott Nelson and the other Services people, on number 10: Better external APIs (import/export, webservices). Well, the Web Services part.

The Services module provides a slick API to implement common web services across a number of different protocols (XML-RPC, SOAP, REST, JSON, etc). Web services have become a very important part of how the websites interact with the user (think Flickr, Last.fm, Google, del.icio.us, etc). Getting parts of the Services module into core would mean that Drupal would have the ability to act more as a web service for external applications. It would allow Drupal to grow beyond the web, allowing interaction with the user in new platforms and in different ways.

Scott will be hosting a session on Services at DrupalCon 2008, so if you're interested in seeing where we'd like to see Services in Drupal 7, I think you should attend.