Configuration management export blocks from Dev to Staging

Question

I created and placed some blocks in my local Drupal 8 Dev site. I exported the full configuration. After I import the configuration into my Staging site I get this error:

This block is broken or missing. You may be missing content or you might need to enable the original module

What do I have to do? And what are best practices for exporting blocks from Dev to Staging and keep Configuration management synced and without errors?

Answer 1

Another approach for synchronizing content that is added as part of development to test and live environments is to use the Default Content module to export the content. It is built for the content to be exported to an installation profile's 'content' folder, and then the module, if enabled, automatically brings the content in when the site is installed. It is also possible to import the content one item at a time, such as in an update hook, with the below code in your example.install or example.profile:

<?php
/**
* Import a piece of content exported by default content module.
*/
function example_import_default_content($path_to_content_json) {
  list($entity_type_id, $filename) = explode('/', $path_to_content_json);
  $p = drupal_get_path('profile', 'guts');
  $encoded_content = file_get_contents($p . '/content/' . $path_to_content_json);
  $serializer = \Drupal::service('serializer');
  $content = $serializer->decode($encoded_content, 'hal_json');
  global $base_url;
  $url = $base_url . base_path();
  $content['_links']['type']['href'] = str_replace('http://drupal.org/', $url, $content['_links']['type']['href']);
  $contents = $serializer->encode($content, 'hal_json');
  $class = 'Drupal\\' . $entity_type_id . '\Entity\\' . str_replace(' ', '', ucwords(str_replace('_', ' ', $entity_type_id)));
  $entity = $serializer->deserialize($contents, $class, 'hal_json', array('request_method' => 'POST'));
  $entity->enforceIsNew(TRUE);
  $entity->save();
}

Export a custom block with an ID of 8:

drush dcer block_content 8

(If you don't set your profile path in Drush settings you'll have to specify it above.)

And use the resultant export in your example.install file like this:

<?php
/**
* Add the footer block content.
*
* Implements hook_update_N().
*/
function example_update_8001() {
  example_import_default_content('block_content/136efd63-021e-42ea-8202-8b97305cc07f.json');
}

See easily add default content with update hooks for more.

Answer 2

Content blocks are content. Unfortunately, there is currently no mechanism in Drupal core to deploy them.

You'd need something like https://www.drupal.org/project/deploy for that, but that's a pretty big project with a lot of dependencies.