I use a headless drupal to expose an api for my front app and I have a question regarding the creation and update process of entities in Drupal.
It could be usefull if I could create my entities and my bundles programmatically like writing a php script and run it. And maybe other to alter my sql schemes and entites fields.
I am actually quite noob with drupal (I am used to django and migrations files that works exactly like that). And I want to know of there is an equivalent for it with drupal (7 or 8 ^^).
You can definitely do this in Drupal using the Entity API. I've only dabbled with this in D7, but it does exactly what you want. Of course, it is all done using a Drupal module in hooks, not just a standalone PHP script.
You create your table using hook_schema, and then handle schema migrations using hook_update_N (where N is any number you choose). The entities are defined using hook_entity_info Then you need controllers to manage your entities, fields and field instances that tell Drupal how your entities relate and some information about display.
It is a fairly involved process the first time you run through it. I know it is bad form to link to external resources here, but this subject is fairly dense. I found http://www.zyxware.com/articles/4779/drupal-how-to-create-custom-entity-programatically-in-drupal-7 to be a very valuable resource when I was creating a proof of concept for a project here at work.
Good luck, and let me know how it goes.
If you are using Drupal 8, Drupal Console will help you a great deal. There is a command for generating entities, controllers, forms and many other things.
For Drupal 7 the Entity Construction Kit is the way to go
I have used both these tools sucessfully in production.
There is a lot of boilerplate code to write as you might have noticed from Quint's suggestion.
Thanks in advance.
Learning Drupal right now as recommended by many people and I cannot get a straight answer to this question:
What are the steps to setting up a CRUD application using Drupal?
(I'll explain further. But that is the premise.)
Working on an application that will do reporting and help out a small sales company with their prospecting and data analysis. Excel right? nope. Their clients will also be needing to access some of their data live via a webapp, so there will need to be different logins with levels of access (clients will see specific data related to their account, sales people will see their accounts, and management will see everything). Here's the real kicker they would like to eventually make it into a native app for android or IOS.
Originally I was going to build it in Codeigniter... which seemed easier, but it was recommended to me that I could cut down on my workload and utilized the "services" module later to do what I am looking to get done now and in the future.
Ignoring the project, I haven't even been able to figure out how to create a form for inputing data (I was assuming "Webforms"). Have that stored to a database, and then displayed in a sortable table.
I have searched around and can't really find a guide to building a simple CRUD application using Drupal as a CMS. I am totally willing to figure out how to put it together if someone could just tell me what modules/ things I need to do.
Example (INCORRECT)
1) Install these modules: Webform, views, CCK, Webform MySQL Views)
2) Activate the modules
3) Configure _ to interact with a specific database Table
4) Et Cetera
In all fairness, I'm still learning how to use Drupal and Doing CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) type interactions might now be possible. If it isn't possible then I apologize for your reading all the way down.
Cheers + Happy Summer
Make sure you're using Drupal 7 (which has CCK built in). Then create one or more content types for the things people will see. Install Views and use that to build the displays for each role (Views is pretty powerful). You'll need to research which node access module would help you best restrict add/edit/delete privileges.
However, you said CodeIgniter is an option (ignoring the fact that CI is not maintained anymore). Any reason why Drupal was recommended instead of another PHP framework like Silex/Yii/Symfony/ZF2/LAravel? Depending on client needs (and how flexible they are) you may find yourself fighting against how Drupal wants to do certain things. If they eventually want to power more than a website via an API, seems like a non-Drupal solution could be better fit. (Until Drupal 8 is out and changes things up a bit)
I have 3 seperate modx evolution website. All 3 websites are completely different and therefore run off a seperate database. However for the news and events pages of each website i would like them to all run from the database of the 1 of the 3 websites. I this possible? is there an extra already created for this purpose?
I have looked into the possibility of using an RSS feed, but would rather have them running directly from the database as this would allow a news article to be added from any of the 3 websites.
Thanks,
Sean.
you can create your extra tables in one modx instance & access them externally ~ however they will need to be on the same file system. I am not aware of a method to do this VIA http/API etc. See here.
http://rtfm.modx.com/display/revolution20/Loading+MODx+Externally
What you will want to do is create your extra table and extend modx using xPDO, it's a fair bit of work to get setup initially but worth it in the long run. This is the best example for getting started, although you will not be extending anything [but modx] it does give you useful examples of creating your schema and registering it with modx.
http://rtfm.modx.com/display/revolution20/Extending+modUser
and
http://rtfm.modx.com/display/revolution20/Using+Custom+Database+Tables+in+your+3rd+Party+Components
Finally, there IS an extra that will generate all your schema files for you, however I can't seem to find what it is called... sorry. If you have multiple tables using foreign keys it may not be all that useful to you as it won't create the relationships in the files it generates.
I have wanted to create a PBBG creator. (Primarily text based games) However, I couldn't think of a system that efficiently allowed people to have the base code, then install modules into the game adding new features.
For example, the base code would consist of a simple home page and bare bones admin panel. Then you would install a registration module which would add new code and new database tables and a login module that would use the registration module's tables. Then from there you could install a Stats Module adding Health, Mana, etc., that would add more columns in the database for users. This would go on till you had a fully operating game made up of several different modules made by several different people.
What I want to know is if this idea is a good one. What are some issues that might appear? And how would I go about making it easy to add, edit, and delete code. Like if a Combat Module had a Module that modified the combat system, how would I go about determining what to change from an install script?
Also, are there any other open source projects using this system I can study to grasp the idea better.
I hope I explained everything well enough, if not please let me know so I can correct that. :)
Thanks!
It seems like you're describing code generation. If your question, then, is whether this is a good idea or not, code generation is a widely accepted "pattern" and should not be considered harmful.
Modifying existing generated code would increase complexity significantly, so what you probably want is some sort of intermediate representation of the code between when the user configures the PBBG and when it is generated. The intermediate representation should be a easily-modifiable full description of the system - modifying this would be a lot easier than writing a script to parse existing code and edit that.
Hope this helps, and good luck!
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I know ASP.NET C# very well. I make a lot of stuff like surveys and custom web applications.
I'm having a lot of trouble wrapping my head around Drupal and figuring out how to do 'special' programmatic things, like searching a list of clients, or creating a web application.
1 - I've been reading books and drupal API but I'm still having a lot of trouble getting started with anything at all. Where does custom code go in respect to pages, modules, snippets...? How do I replicate form X that I did in ASP.NET into a new page in drupal? Etc. It is super hard to wrap my head around Drupal, it seems so large and easy and extensible yet also like it is difficult for me to code. What can you recommend for an ASP.NET application programmer to learn to work with/in Drupal?
2 - Sometimes we write complete ASP.NET applications for clients, and these applications are not indended for clients to go editing them. For example, we will have our entire website in drupal, but inside of that website we will have a place for users to use a special search for database information. We don't want simple website editors and content providers trying to edit this specially coded page(s). How do I handle not wanting clients to edit anything in a Drupal application? Is it handled via page/user permissions? Is the best thing to develop and host an application completely outside of drupal? Is the drupal application it's own drupal instance inside of a drupal website (nested drupals?) ?
3 - Lastly, how do I handle databases? I understand Drupal and PHP are set to work best with MySQL. We have MS SQL databases that are used by multiple applications and would like to use them for new applications as we start using Drupal. For example, we have a Staff directory that feeds ASP.NET reporting application, ASP.NET Staff Listing application, and want to make a new Drupal PHP application that also uses (and perhaps inserts/updates more information into) that database. What is the best/easiest way to handle MS SQL databases and/or MySQL databases being used and updated by multiple Drupal and ASP.NET applications? Would it be easier to have all the applications use the MS SQL databases, or maybe to replicate the databases on MySQL for the Drupal/PHP apps and somehow sync the two databases?
I hope it is alright if I ask multiple related questions in a single post.
I'm afraid that I don't have any experience with Drupal so I can't offer any insights into your first or second questions, but on the third question:
What is the best/easiest way to handle
MS SQL databases and/or MySQL
databases being used and updated by
multiple Drupal and ASP.NET
applications?
If you are going to perform CRUD operations from both your ASP.NET applications and your PHP/Drupal applications, then I would recommend against trying to sync data back and forth between MySQL and MSSQL since this will cause latency problems plus you'll then have to deal with the differences between the two database management systems.
Instead, I would recommend that you look at using stored procedures to control all database accesses. This way you can ensure that all of your database CRUD operations conform to same rules and logic.
Using MSSQL in both ASP.NET and PHP shouldn't be a problem, especially not with the very excellent PDO library that provides a standard interface for accessing a number of popular database management systems. It should allow you to quickly and easily connect with and begin using your MSSQL databases within your PHP applications.
It is some good questions you ask. I'll try to answer them to the best of my ability. I haven't any experience with c# of APS.NET, so I don't know exactly where you are coming from. I myself learned Drupal as an inexperienced python/django developer. So in some ways I can understand some of the troubles you are going through trying to learn Drupal. Some of these things will simply require time/experience/experimenting before it will go away.
To really understand Drupal and the Drupal API you will first need a good understanding of PHP. Sometimes Drupal do some complex PHP things, so if you don't understand the syntax or the PHP functions etc, you can easy get lost.
Where do code live?
Drupal is built as a moduler system. Drupal itself is a set of modules, some of which are required for Drupal to work properly. If you want make some custom code, that is you want to do something, that you can't use a module for. There are about 5000 modules developed for Drupal. Often even when being a skilled programmer, the best choice is to find a module that will do what you need or can get you where close. So what you do, it to create a module of your own.
Make a folder with the name of the module
Create a modulename.info inside it which holds some info about the module formatted in a special way. Drupal will need it to fx display the module on the module list page where you activate modules.
Lastly create a modulename.module file where the core of your code for the module will be.
Another thing that is important to understand with Drupal, is that it uses a hook based system. Hooks are like events that fire once certain things happen that you want to hook into and either alter the flow, or do some things of your own. Fx you could record every time a specific form was displayed, or you could alter the form, adding/removing fields.
Forms
Drupal has a FAIP or Form API, that is uses to generate form, this is something that has it's own page in the documentation. The idea is that you create an associative PHP array which holds information about each element of the form, and Drupal will use that to create the form.
Books
There are a lot of good books for Drupal that you can learn from. The book I myself have learned the most from is Pro Drupal Development
First of all, Drupal has a very fine grained role based permission system, that will allow you to setup exactly what your clients are allowed to do. You can create different roles, like moderator, content creator, admin, sysadmin ect, and give different permissions to each role. This is pretty easy and is setup within the Drupal AI. However, you will need to know the permissions as some are super permissions that will give access to a lot of things. Now for integrating your applications, that is something that you probably want to write a custom module for. I don't know exactly how you want to do this. But I think the best result would be gotten by letting Drupal create the pages, forms etc from your application and just send data back and forth. That way the theme = layout of the site would be consistent. That way users wouldn't get the feeling that they left the site, but this simply was yet another feature the site offered.
Drupal is not just set to handle MYSQL best, You will actually need either MYSQL or PSQL as your drupal database backend. The reason is the way Drupal handles queries, that allow you to write non specific queries that will work, no matter on which of the two types you use, or if your tables has a prefix. So for all of the Drupal internals you will need one of the two. PHP can connect to MSSQL and run queries against that database, so you could without much problems write custom code that run queries to your other application's databases and either fetch or update data. Depending on the data, you might want to create a table in your database that you can read and write to, and then sync the databases when needed. It depends a bit on your use case. I have done the latter, in the case where I didn't need to write to the database, but only needed to fetch some product information form a legacy database that was still being used by other systems.
First of all, I think what's important to understand Drupal's limitations, there are things it's not really made for. It's sort of a web application framework but if you're doing a lot of custom work with your own custom datamodelling and stuff, Drupal might not be the most flexible or easily implementable solution to your kinds of problems. A more general framework like for instance Zend Framework might be more suited.
An important lesson in learning Drupal is: don't hack core or other modules. This will make upgrading core or modules very time-consuming. Instead "do like Drupal" and override using hooks. In theming you can also override with hooks, but also in other ways. Overriding is powerful so understand that concept well.
I'd say, pick a way of learning that is your style, screencasts, IRC, hacking, user meetups IRL, books, articles or any combination and look for material on Drupal. Just start mucking around and get a feeling and understanding of how Drupal works. Understanding the jargon is an important part, so what are: nodes, blocks, regions, hooks, modules, themes.
Drupal has a very flexible permission system, and it's probably the best choice to use that instead of making your own. You can write your own modules that add to or alter the behavior of Drupal. So if you want to write a new application that works with Drupal you can write a module performing the functionality the application has to have and make use of all the facilities Drupal offers, including users, the permission system, etc, etc. I don't really understand the last part of your second question "Is the drupal application it's own drupal instance inside of a drupal website (nested drupals?) ?". Drupal is a collection of PHP files on a server that, together with a slew of tables in a database serves request made to it. Multiple Drupal websites (so different PHP files) can reference the same database or parts of it (for example the user table). There's not really an "instance" of a Drupal site, as there's not really an "application". I could of course be too unfamiliar with these terms but I don't think PHP works with "instances" of "applications".
That's a hard problem, afaik Drupal doesn't work with MS SQL, so any connections in that direction you might have to make yourself. I'd also ask around the Drupal forums or on IRC.
Good luck!
rlb,
I've done quite a bit of Drupal and have strong ASP.NET experience. You really need to read up to get your mindset straight. They use layers in an MVC-like fashion that is very foreign to WebForms & ASP.NET MVC developers ... and quite frankly at first seems odd.
Here's a list of things I did to get really, really good quickly:
Get a host like at hostgator for $8 which will let you install Drupal
Get the book Pro Drupal Development for Beginners ... excellent and really covers a lot of areas http://www.amazon.com/Pro-Drupal-Development-Second-Beginning/dp/1430209895/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257545528&sr=8-2
Get on the Drupal forums
Be ready to contribute. Drupal has a lot of features, but in the end the best way is to be someone who contributes code back
There are a number of IDEs to consider, but to start a text editor should be fine.
Good luck.
Some good answers here, so I'll just fill in some brief items.
1 - Learning Drupal: Pro Drupal Development is the best book for this. Getting into the issue queues and interacting with developers is a way to get familiar with specifics. Your question about forms relates to how Drupal handles forms. The FAPI is pretty robust in Drupal, and protects you from security gaffes. Also api dot Drupal dot org is where the code is documented, though there are docs elsewhere. Google is your friend. (On the Drupal site itself, use the native search to get faceted results.)
2 - This is a user permissions issue. You can limit creation and editing permissions based on content type. For access control (read), you will want to use one of the many modules for access control. It really depends upon your use case.
3 - Drupal has the most community support for MySQL, but people run Drupal on MS SQL as well. In Drupal 7, you will likely see much more support for non-MySQL as this release introduces database abstraction.
Probably the worst thing to do is hack around the margins. It really pays to learn the ins and outs of the Drupal basics -- administration and coding -- so that you can truly leverage the power Drupal brings to the table.
And if you're hunting for modules, http://drupalmodules.com is your friend. ;)