Frequently Asked Questions

Why my SDC component doesn't work well with Display Builder?

Display Builder is not doing anything anything specific with your SDC. It is only an user interface upon UI Patterns 2.

UI Patterns 2 is not expecting you to change your SDC component in order to be compatible.

However, if your component has definitions or templating issues, it will be harder for UI Patterns 2.x to connect it to Drupal API

You can check your component with sdc_devel which provides automatic audits.

A component without error must be compatible with UI Patterns 2.x and Display Builder.

Why my preprocess hook is not triggered anymore?

Display Builder is avoiding as much as possible to interact with ThemeManager::render():

By design, Entity View Display integration is sometimes bypassing node.html.twig, user.html.twig, media.html.twig, field.html.twig...
By design, Page Layout integration is sometimes bypassing page.html.twig and region.html.twig
By design, Views integration is sometimes bypassing views-view.html.twig, views-view-field.html.twig...

So, your preprocess and suggestions related to those templates will not be executed.

What is the relationship with UI Patterns and UI Suite?

This is a display building tool made by a team specialized in design systems and display building since 2017: UI Suite people.

This project is new but it is only a thin layer upon APIs we are building for many years, and which are already used, tested and loved by many: UI Patterns.

Like Canvas, this project is a next generation display building tool for Drupal.

However, the 2 projects are different. Display Builder is currently targeting a wider horizontal scope (more display building coverage):

	Canvas	Display Builder
Layout builder replacement	✅ Config & content overrides	✅ Config & content overrides
Page layout replacement	⚠️ Yes, but each region is a builder	✅ Full page support
View (displays) replacement	❌ Out of scope	✅
Entity form modes	❌ Out of scope	⚠️ Planned

But Canvas is currently targeting a deeper vertical scope (before and after display building):

	Canvas	Display Builder
Content editing	✅ the main feature	⚠️ Planned
Component authoring	✅ the "code components"	❌ Out of scope, we promote SDC instead

Visual explanation:

Both share more or less the same feature set:

	Canvas	Display Builder
Pattern presets	✅ as config entity	✅ as config entity
History, undo, redo	✅	✅
Real-time collaboration	❌	✅

And they also differ by the technical and strategic choices. For example, Canvas is a complete ReactJS app, aside of Drupal, when Display Builder is just an usual Drupal module using HTMX.

So we are going in 2 different directions and our friendly competition will be only on the shared subset of our scopes. So, not such a big deal.

We hope both will be usable in a same project if this is needed by a team. Anyway, we are actively collaborating to provide same or compatible low level API and to improve Drupal Core together. So it is a win-win situation.

Comparison with Layout Builder

What is the equivalent of Layout Builder Restrictions?

layout_builder_restrictions provides a configurable UI for restricting blocks and layouts. Sites can allow all options from a certain provider, or restrict all options by provider, or specify individual allowed blocks & layouts.

layout_builder_restrictions_by_role allows restricting what roles can place what blocks or use what layout (so, what component).

This is doable with Display Builder by creating different Display builder profiles by role and to configure the Components library and Block library panels differently.

What is the equivalent of Layout Builder Lock?

Layout Builder Lock allows administrators to lock sections of a default layout so users can't perform certain actions when overriding the layout for an individual entity.

This feature is planned for #3551232