How to create views programmatically in Drupal 8

Creating views programmatically is quite different than we did in Drupal 7. In Drupal 7 we have hook_views_default_views(), we don’t have this hook in Drupal 8. We will use configuration manager in Drupal 8 for creating views programmatically. You can read more about Drupal 8 configuration manager here.

Before you continue…

• You know how to create a basic module in Drupal 7, right?
• You have a Drupal 8 instance running

We will create a small module. After you enable the module in any Drupal 8 instance, the view will be created there.

The my_module.info.yml file

name: 'My module'
description: 'This is my module. I will create a view here.'
core: 8.x
type: module

This is the basic info file. Obviously you can add other properties as well.

The my_module.module file

<?php

/**
 * @file
 * This is my module. I will create a view here, and it will be empty.
 */

Yes it will be an empty file :) Here comes the tricky part.

First you have to create the view (that you want to create programatically) from the administrator UI.

Go to Configuration Synchronize interface. You can find this interface here admin/config/development/configuration

Click on Single Import/Export tab, and then click on Export tab. Finally you will reach this path admin/config/development/configuration/single/export

Select View in Configuration type. All views currently present in the system will be loaded in the next setting Configuration name. Select the name of view in Configuration name.

After you select the view name, a yaml text will be generated in the textarea below. Note the filename you see below the text area, and copy it somewhere.

Create directory called config inside your module’s root directory, and inside that create another directory called install. Inside install create a file with filename that you copied earlier. Open that empty file. You will require the yaml text which we generated earlier, copy it all. Paste it in the empty file. At the beginning of the file you will see a line starting with uuid, remove it. We are removing this because its instance specific data. You would have required this data if you were exporting this view to any other instance, say dev/stage instance of the system.

The views.view.VIEWS_MACHINE_NAME.yml file

# views.view.my_module_myview.yml file
# ....
# system generated yml code without uuid data
# ...

my_module directory structure

• my_module
  • my_module.info.yml
  • my_module.module
  • config
    • install
      • views.view.VIEWS_MACHINE_NAME.yml

P.S. The above suggested method for creating views programmatically is tested on latest codebase of Drupal 8 (as of 9th August 2015). This is just an approach for creating views programmatically, there can be other better approaches, suggestions are welcome :)