Aten Design Group: Syncing Drupal and React for a Custom Interactive Map for Tampa International Airport
A new website as easy to navigate as the airport itself
Tampa International Airport consistently ranks #1 in customer satisfaction thanks in part to how easy it is to navigate. Our goal of the redesign of tampaairport.com was to make sure their Drupal 10 website was just as easy to maneuver. Their team wanted to level up their website’s airport map from simple and static to interactive and dynamic.
React application with Drupal content management
The application's goal was to fetch data from the newly implemented site, providing users with a tool to easily navigate the airport, search for specific locations, and even order food in advance at airport restaurants and cafes. The decision to build a React application stemmed from its performance and ability to integrate with the Drupal site, enabling site editors to consolidate, manage, and edit all content through the Drupal UI. This approach ensured that content updates could occur dynamically without the need for additional development efforts, setting up their team to sustain the custom map.
Recognizing that the primary users of this application would be on mobile devices, we worked hard to ensure that all JavaScript libraries and node packages were lightweight and optimized for mobile performance.
We significantly reduced the overall footprint of the React application before integrating it into the Drupal site by leveraging techniques like code splitting, which separates components that can be loaded independently, and tree shaking, which removes unused code when bundling multiple JavaScript files. This reduced package size ensures a more efficient experience for users accessing the app on their mobile devices.
React Leaflet library
From a technology standpoint, the application is built using React Leaflet, a library that establishes connections between React and the open-source Leaflet JavaScript library. The incorporation of Leaflet enables us to display custom images, replacing traditional geographical maps within the interface. To dynamically display our SVG maps, we utilize the ImageOverlay component using map information provided by our custom API endpoint provided by Drupal. We use memoization at the location level so that when users switch between maps, the application swiftly recalls previously viewed layers, ensuring a seamless and responsive experience.
const mapImage = useMemo(() => { return <ImageOverlay url={props.mapSVG} bounds={bounds} />; }, [props.mapSVG]);Leaflet provides us with the flexibility to set our own boundaries for the map layer. In this application, we opted for a 1000 by 1000 base grid. Within the Drupal UI, editors have the ability to effortlessly add new map locations by specifying X and Y coordinates, effectively placing locations on the map within the established grid.
Furthermore, editors can easily customize the displayed map icons and manage the inclusion of locations within specific icon groupings, all through the user-friendly provided UI. This streamlined process empowers editors to make dynamic adjustments to the map without the need for additional development support.
Interactive user experience
The application also includes a list view of the map in which users can select specific locations, triggering a seamless navigation experience on the visual map. Each location in the list displays details such as their name, description, business hours, current status, and proximity to airport gates. Upon choosing a location, the application responds by centering the corresponding point on the visual map.
This interactive feature enhances user experience, allowing them to effortlessly explore and locate points of interest without manually searching the entire map. The linkage between the list view and the visual map ensures that users can easily transition from browsing a curated list of locations to visually identifying and locating those places on the map interface. It serves as an intuitive method to guide users from the textual representation of locations to their spatial representation on the visual map.
Notably, the list view was designed with accessibility in mind, ensuring better usability for keyboard and screen reader users. This thoughtful implementation caters to a diverse range of users, making it an inclusive and user-friendly experience for all. Check it out for yourself.
Video fileThe collaboration between the Drupal and React technologies allowed us to build a solution that seamlessly meets the needs of both users navigating the maps and the editors on the Tampa International Airport team. Even though creating this map from scratch was a blast, the custom application I built could easily be applied to another client’s map or way-finding tool.
Wim Leers: XB week 26: ComponentSource plugins
A strong start of the week by Harumi “hooroomoo” Jang and Jesse Baker, to remove the “insert” panel appearing over the left sidebar, in favor of the components being listed inside the left sidebar:
Experience Builder’s (XB) component library now appears in the left sidebar — making them easier to reach. (Previously, there was a blue “plus” button that covered the left sidebar.)Issue #3482394, image by Harumi.
The XB UI is once again leaping ahead of the back end: the UI for saving compositions of components as “sections” landed, well ahead of the necessary config entity, let alone the needed HTTP API for actually saving those! 👏
Missed a prior week? See all posts tagged Experience Builder.
Goal: make it possible to follow high-level progress by reading ~5 minutes/week. I hope this empowers more people to contribute when their unique skills can best be put to use!
For more detail, join the #experience-builder
Slack channel. Check out the pinned items at the top!
Blocks
After a lot of iteration, Dave “longwave” Long, Felix “f.mazeikis” Mazeikis, Ted “tedbow” Bowman, Lee “larowlan” Rowlands and I landed the initial MR to add Blocks support to XB!
Until now, XB was tightly coupled to Single Directory Components (SDC). That’s no longer the case, thanks to the introduction of:
ComponentSource
plugins: the existing SDC support was refactored into ansdc
component source, the new Block support lives in ablock
component source- XB’s
Component
config entities now have asource
property, referring to one of those source plugins
There’s still lots of loose ends — from the pragmatic low-level choice of using hook_block_alter()
to automatically create Component
config entities, to the rather limiting facts that block plugins’ settings forms do not yet work (the default settings are always used). But the basic infrastructure is there!
This was a huge refactor: 35 files, +1861, −878
is no small diffstat 😅
Grab bag
- Atul “soaratul” Dubey fixed the deletion of components with non-empty slots leaving cruft behind.
- The “tabs” in the both sidebars were updated to match the designs by Shyam “shyam_bhatt” Bhatt, Jesse and Harumi.
Week 26 was November 4–November 10, 2024.
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mauricio Fri, 02/21/2025 - 05:00ComputerMinds.co.uk: Views Data Export: Sprint 3 Summary
I've started working on maintaining Views Data Export again.
I've decided to document my work in 2 week 'sprints'. And so this article is about what I did in Sprint 3.
The sprint ended up being a lot longer than i'd planned for various reasons, mostly illness. I'm starting another sprint today, and so wanted to post an update and draw a line under 'Sprint 3'.
Sprint progress
At the start of the sprint in the Drupal.org issue queue there were:
- 48 open bugs
- 4 fixed issues.
- 63 other open issues
That's a total of 115 open issues.
By the end it looked like this:
- 45 open bugs
- 1 fixed issue.
- 63 other open issues
So that's a total of 109 open issues, only a 5% reduction from before.
Key goals
In this sprint I wanted to:
- Go through the remaining bug reports
Bug reports
- I've still not managed to get through the remaining bug reports, though some have been closed/fixed in the sprint.
Future roadmap/goals
I'm not committing myself to doing these exactly, or any particular order, but this is my high-level list of hopes/dreams/desires, I'll copy and paste this to the next sprint summary article as I go and adjust as required.
- Update the documentation on Drupal.org
- Not have any duplicate issues on Drupal.org
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