Content as Configuration

There are several entities which Drupal considers to be content which are, in the main, site-structure configuration. These entities include custom block content, menu links, and taxonomy terms, among others. The “Content as Configuration” module allows you to save the content of these entities as configuration items, which means you can export them as YAML files and move them from one environment to another. It is easily extensible to handle other such content entities; an example submodule supporting import/export of feeds is included.

This module started out as a fork of the structure_sync module, which (at the time of this writing) is not Drupal 9 compatible, and additionally does not offer export of feeds. This turned into a full module rewrite to take full advantage of modern PHP’s more advanced object-oriented capabilities.

The module also exposes Drush commands to allow automation of these import/export tasks.

Drush comands Available Drush commands are as follows:


* drush content_as_config:import <entity-type> [--style=safe|full|force] - Imports entities of the given type (block_content, menu_link_content, taxonomy_term) using the given import style. (See below for an explanation of import styles.) Other modules may extend the list of supported exportable entity types; the key will always be the machine name of the entity type.
* drush content_as_config:export <entity-type> - Exports all entities of the given entity-type to configuration.
* drush content_as_config:import-all [--style=safe|full|force] - Performs import of all supported entity types in the given style. By default, this list includes block_content, menu_link_content, and taxonomy_term entities, as well as any types supported by other modules.
* drush content_as_config:export-all - Exports all instances of supported entity types to configuration.

More granular control over what gets imported and exported may be achieved via the admin UI at /admin/structure/content-as-config.

Import styles Safe
This import style imports all entities of the given type which have been exported to configuration, unless they already exist in the current Drupal instance. Safe import will not update already-existing content.

Full
This import style will delete any entities of the given type that are not in configuration. It will then perform a full insert + update import.

Force
Deletes all entities of the given type in the system (without any further checks), and then performs an insert-only import from configuration. This is the nuclear option; use with care.