A cheeky look at building Drupal web sites out of external web services. Drupal as a mashup engine? It can happen, but there are some important issues to consider.

1. Promiscuous Drupal
Imagine a daringly racy subtitle
Monday, March 23, 2009

2. http://www.flickr.com/photos/herzogbr/2274372747/
Monday, March 23, 2009

3. this is why we love drupal
http://www.flickr.com/photos/herzogbr/2274372747/
Monday, March 23, 2009

4. this is what we make it
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5. http://www.flickr.com/photos/ladyada/3039492078/
Monday, March 23, 2009

6. Drupal as one tool
among many
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ladyada/3039492078/
Monday, March 23, 2009

7. Enlarging the Toolbox*
• Spam Filtering (Mollom, Akismet)
• Searching/Indexing (Solr, Google, Aquia)
• Feed Generation (Feedburner)
• Content tagging (Calais, TimesTags)
• Authentication (OpenID, etc.)
• Sending bulk mail (Mailchimp, etc.)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ladyada/3039492078/
Monday, March 23, 2009

8. Enlarging the Toolbox*
Farm out services that...
• Benefit from centralization (auth, ads)
• Require expertise (bulk mail wrangling)
• Demand massive processing or sample data
(fast indexing, spam filtering, auto-tagging)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ladyada/3039492078/
Monday, March 23, 2009

9. http://www.flickr.com/photos/mr_diesio/2548025554
Monday, March 23, 2009

10. Getting Dangerous
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mr_diesio/2548025554
Monday, March 23, 2009

11. Takin’ it up a notch
• Posting links? Use Delicious.
• Shoutbox/short updates? Use Twitter.
• Photos and galleries? Use Flickr!
• Video? Youtube, Blip.tv, etc.
• Reviewing books? Amazon, Goodreads.
• Comments? Disqus!
• Blogging? Use Wordpress.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mr_diesio/2548025554
Monday, March 23, 2009

12. I… but… my forms!
• You will never enter product information as
accurately as Amazon.
• You will never be as popular as Flickr.
• You will never write a Firefox Plugin for
Link Field.
• You will never enjoy transcoding your own
video.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mr_diesio/2548025554
Monday, March 23, 2009

13. Become the
crossroads, or
enhance native
content
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sidelong/542906832
Monday, March 23, 2009

14. Become the
crossroads, or
enhance native
Link to content
Content
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sidelong/542906832
Monday, March 23, 2009

15. When does it work?
• Common on social sites
• Ever used Facebook?
• News sites (CNN, etc.)
• Personal Aggregators (FriendFeed, Tumblr)
• External content is treated as something
that lives out there
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sidelong/542906832
Monday, March 23, 2009

16. How can you do it?
• Good ol’ aggregator (it’s themable now)
• Activity module (it supports views!)
• DayLife API, NowPublic’s new service
• Native modules (delicious, flick, etc.)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sidelong/542906832
Monday, March 23, 2009

17. Gobble up
content
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18. Gobble up
content
Use external sources
as your primary source
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19. Does this make sense?
• How hardcore are you?
• How badly do your content producers hate
the node form?
• External content is treated as something
that lives in here.
• Drupal becomes a presentation engine
• Drupal becomes a… mashup?
Monday, March 23, 2009

20. How the..?
• Native modules
• FeedAPI + Feed Element Mapper
• Nodes become flexible wrappers
• Lay your own pipes (we’ll see this later)
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21. Drupal
PHP
Apache MySQL
Operating System
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22. Flickr
Drupal
Delicious
PHP
Google
Apache MySQL
Stuff
Operating System
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23. Flickr
Delicious
Google
Drupal
Stuff
Amazon
Monday, March 23, 2009

24. Flickr
Delicious
Google
Drupal
Stuff
Amazon
Monday, March 23, 2009

25. Are you insane?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/beaub/2424695862/
Monday, March 23, 2009

26. Maybe a little insane
• Filtering the firehose (tagging helps)
• Importing the Internet
• 8192 auth methods (OAuth helps?)
• Even Amazon goes down.
• Magnolia (moment of silence)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/beaub/2424695862/
Monday, March 23, 2009

27. Yeah, kind of insane.
• Congratulations! You’re an integration
specialist!
• How much do you trust the Internet?
• You can’t form_alter someone else’s site.
• You’re assembling data streams instead of
modules.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/beaub/2424695862/
Monday, March 23, 2009

28. Monday, March 23, 2009

29. Rolling your own
integration
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30. Doing it with Drupal
• drupal_http_request()
• PHP 5 - SimpleXML & JSON
• drupal_write_record()
• Expose your tables via Views
• Wrap local vs. remote
• (See “Building APIs That Rock”)
Monday, March 23, 2009

31. If you release it...
• Support the full API (or as much as you can)
• Fail gracefully
• Don’t force data into nodes
• Cache data whenever you can
• Don’t write a SQL query builder
• PHPDoc, PHPDoc, PHPDoc!
Monday, March 23, 2009

32. Don’t forget…
• Respect API policies (Limits, Caching)
• Don’t trust the data you get back
• There are cutting-edge options
• Custom Views queries (Flickr?)
• In Drupal 7, remote fields
• NowPublic’s Aggregation system
Monday, March 23, 2009

33. Leveraging our Synergy
• Drupal is a great tool
• Its strengths can be weaknesses
• Outsource services
• Drupal can be a mixer
• If you roll your own, think ahead
Monday, March 23, 2009