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Backdrop

Backdrop CMS is the free and Open Source CMS that helps you build websites for businesses and non-profits.

Lando offers a configurable recipe for developing Backdrop CMS apps.

Getting Started

Before you get started with this recipe we assume that you have:

  1. Installed Lando and gotten familiar with its basics
  2. Initialized a Landofile for your codebase for use with this recipe
  3. Read about the various services, tooling, events and routing Lando offers.

However, because you are a developer and developers never ever RTFM you can also run the following commands to try out this recipe with a vanilla install of Backdrop CMS.

# Initialize a backdrop recipe using the latest backdrop version
lando init \
  --source remote \
  --remote-url https://github.com/backdrop/backdrop/releases/download/1.12.1/backdrop.zip \
  --recipe backdrop \
  --webroot backdrop \
  --name my-first-backdrop-app

# Start it up
lando start

# List information about this app.
lando info

Configuration

While Lando recipes set sane defaults so they work out of the box, they are also configurable.

Here are the configuration options, set to the default values, for this recipe's Landofile. If you are unsure about where this goes or what this means, we highly recommend scanning the recipes documentation to get a good handle on how the magicks work.

recipe: backdrop
config:
  php: '7.2'
  composer_version: '2.0.7'
  via: apache:2.4
  webroot: .
  database: mysql:5.7
  backdrush: '1.0.0'
  xdebug: false
  config:
    database: SEE BELOW
    php: SEE BELOW
    server: SEE BELOW
    vhosts: SEE BELOW

Note that if the above config options are not enough, all Lando recipes can be further extended and overriden.

Choosing a php version

You can set php to any version that is available in our php service. However, you should consult the Backdrop requirements to make sure that version is actually supported by Backdrop itself.

The recipe config to set the Backdrop recipe to use php version 5.5 is shown below:

recipe: backdrop
config:
  php: '5.5'

Choosing a composer version

You can set composer_version to any version that is available in our php service.

recipe: backdrop
config:
  composer_version: '1.10.1'

Choosing a web server

By default, this recipe will be served by the default version of our apache service but you can also switch this to use nginx. We highly recommend you check out both the apache and nginx services before you change the default via.

With Apache (default)

recipe: backdrop
config:
  via: apache

With nginx

recipe: backdrop
config:
  via: nginx

Choosing a database backend

By default, this recipe will use the default version of our mysql service as the database backend but you can also switch this to use mariadb instead. Note that you can also specify a version as long as it is a version available for use with lando for either mysql or mariadb.

If you are unsure about how to configure the database, we highly recommend you check out both the mysql and mariadb services before you change the default.

Also note that like the configuration of the php version, you should consult the Backdrop requirements to make sure the database and version you select is actually supported by Backdrop itself.

Using MySQL (default)

recipe: backdrop
config:
  database: mysql

Using MariaDB

recipe: backdrop
config:
  database: mariadb

Using a custom version

recipe: backdrop
config:
  database: mariadb:10.2

Using Drush

By default, our Backdrop recipe will globally install the latest version of Drush 8 as well as the latest version of Backdrop Drush. This means that you should be able to use lando drush out of the box.

Configuring your root directory

If you are using a webroot besides ., you will need to cd into that directory and run lando drush from there. This is because many site-specific drush commands will only run correctly if you run drush from a directory that also contains a Backdrop site.

If you are annoyed by having to cd into that directory every time you run a drush command, you can get around it by overriding the drush tooling command in your Landofile so that Drush always runs from your webroot.

Note that hard coding the root like this may have unforeseen and bad consequences for some drush commands such as drush scr.

tooling:
  drush:
    service: appserver
    cmd: drush --root=/app/PATH/TO/WEBROOT

Using xdebug

This is just a passthrough option to the xdebug setting that exists on all our php services. The tl;dr is xdebug: true enables and configures the php xdebug extension and xdebug: false disables it.

recipe: backdrop
config:
  xdebug: true|false

However, for more information we recommend you consult the php service documentation.

Using custom config files

You may need to override our default Backdrop config with your own.

If you do this, you must use files that exist inside your application and express them relative to your project root as shown below:

Note that the default files may change based on how you set both ssl and via. Also note that the vhosts and server config will be either for apache or nginx depending on how you set via. We highly recommend you check out both the apache and nginx if you plan to use a custom vhosts or server config.

A hypothetical project

Note that you can put your configuration files anywhere inside your application directory. We use a config directory but you can call it whatever you want such as .lando in the example below:

./
|-- config
   |-- default.conf
   |-- my-custom.cnf
   |-- php.ini
   |-- server.conf
|-- index.php
|-- .lando.yml

Landofile using custom backdrop config

recipe: backdrop
config:
  config:
    database: config/my-custom.cnf
    php: config/php.ini
    server: config/server.conf
    vhosts: config/default.conf

Connecting to your database

Unlike other unnamed php-based CMSes, Backdrop's database connection information can be set by an environmental variable named BACKDROP_SETTINGS. Lando will set this variable for you which means that unless you explicitly hijack the default functionality, you should not need to do anything to configure your database connection.

You can also examine and use this variable in-code similarly to how you would with LANDO_INFO.

lando php -r "print_r(getenv('BACKDROP_SETTINGS'));"
# {"databases":{"default":{"default":{"driver":"mysql","database":"backdrop","username":"backdrop","password":"backdrop","host":"database","port":3306}}}}

If you find that you still cannot connect to your database, the default information about your Backdrop database is shown below:

Note that the host is not localhost but database.

database: backdrop
username: backdrop
password: backdrop
host: database

You can get also get the above information, and more, by using the lando info command.

Importing Your Database

Once you've started up your Backdrop site, you will need to pull in your database and files before you can really start to dev all the dev. Pulling your files is as easy as downloading an archive and extracting it to the correct location. Importing a database can be done using our helpful lando db-import command.

# Grab your database dump
curl -fsSL -o database.sql.gz "https://url.to.my.db/database.sql.gz"

# Import the database
# NOTE: db-import can handle uncompressed, gzipped or zipped files
# Due to restrictions in how Docker handles file sharing your database
# dump MUST exist somewhere inside of your app directory.
lando db-import database.sql.gz

You can learn more about the db-import command over here.

Tooling

By default, each Lando Backdrop recipe will also ship with helpful dev utilities.

This means you can use things like drush, composer and php via Lando and avoid mucking up your actual computer trying to manage php versions and tooling.

lando composer          Runs composer commands
lando db-export [file]  Exports database from a service into a file
lando db-import <file>  Imports a dump file into database service
lando drush             Runs drush commands
lando mysql             Drops into a MySQL shell on a database service
lando php               Runs php commands

Usage examples

# Download a dependency with drush
lando drush dl webform

# Check the app's installed php extensions
lando php -m

You can also run lando from inside your app directory for a complete list of commands. This is always advisable as your list of commands may not be 100% the same as above.

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