Web Service Clients 6.x-1.x-de

Parallel to the Services module, the Clients module provides the ability to implement pluggable clients to external web services, including external Drupal sites running the Services module.The main use case is ingesting content from other Drupal installs via the Services module XMLRPC server. There is also a proof-of-concept module for Flickr using REST which could be used as a basis for other data providers.Two clients are provided which interface with existing modules: * A Feeds-based module which can be used to write nodes and perform basic ETL operations using Feeds mapping. * A Views3-based module which can be used for dynamic content that isn't stored locally.It is envisaged that other clients could be written e.g. migration client, write-based push client, search client, taxonomy client etc. Contributions are welcome of course.As clients and services are pluggable, any client should be able to use any compatible service.Following a rewrite or two, some incomplete but hopefully working code committed as a dev preview. This shouldn't be used in production but should work on a test system and demonstrates the architecture.This suite currently provides following modules: * clients - The base module for administration of client configurations. These are made of connections and resources. Connections are where you configure the connection details for an external service, such as API key, endpoint and methods you want to expose. Resources build on connections and each specify a connection, method and parameters. * clients_drupal. This allows you to set up connections and resources to external Drupal sites running the Services module. They should be running Services 6.x-2.0 using the built-in XML-RPC server with key and session authentication. * crypt_blowfish. A simple wrapper module for PEAR Crypt_Blowfish. Passwords to external services are encrypted before being stored on the db. (This is optional and called via hooks so you can use alternate encryption methods.) * clients_flickr. This allows you to set up connections and resources to Flickr. * clients_feeds. A feeds-based client. After enabling, you need to choose the clients fetcher and parser in your feeds configuration. N.B. requires Feeds alpha10 or greater. * clients_views. A views-based client. N.B. This requires Views 3.Some configuration required to get this working, see status report after install. In particular, clients_drupal currently recommends PEAR Crypt_Blowfish (can be installed standalone if you don't have PEAR access). See http://drupal.org/node/673666#comment-2433210These currently support a limited range of read methods - the services backend supports views and the flickr backend supports search. These will be expanded going forward. Immediate next steps are to stabilise this module against services, bugfixes, UI improvements and documentation.StructureThe core Clients module provides management of 'connnections' and 'resources'. One connection can have many resources.ConnectionsConnections handle fetching a result from a remote service. There are various types of connection defined by modules. These are shown under the menu item Site Configuration > Clients > Connections > Add {type} connection. All connection types require a unique name and remote endpoint. Depending on the kind of connection, various additional fields are required to configure it. For example, Drupal connections require key and login information. (We also store a list of remote services and remote view names in the configuration but looking at getting rid of these.)Connections also provide further configuration options that are exposed in Resources.ResourcesResources provide a helper layer for clients. While a client can access a connection directly and pass various arguments in code, in some cases (e.g. Views, Feeds) it is better to handle the configuration separately and simply provide a list of available preset configurations to the client.A resource represents the arguments that would be passed to a connection beyond the endpoint and authorization information - so for a Drupal connection they may include: connection, method, view name, view argument, offset and limit. This means that various resources can be defined and a client simply needs to select one and call it. (Clients can override default arguments provided here - for example Views does this.)Dependent on the connection selected for a resource, the configuration options will change depending on its type.

Requirements:	No special requirements
Platforms:	PHP
Keyword:	Arguments,  Client,  Clients,  Configuration,  Connection,  Connections,  Drupal,  Endpoint,  External,  Module,  Modules,  Remote,  Resources,  Services,  Views
Users rating:	0/10