Drupal is a CMS, not a web framework.
Does this mean it should only be used for publishing posts, blogs, graphs or what ever content you can think of or can it be used for more sophisticated applications with 'true' business logic behind the scenes ?
Can it be used for developing a resource management application? Can we extend the Drupal database with our own tables that represent business objects?
You should be able to extend Drupal with custom modules to achieve your business goals. I wouldn't add onto the Drupal database adjusting it's schema since that would make patching and upgrading difficult to say the least. You could use an additional database if needed if the existing Drupal database API doesn't meet your needs. There is also a Drupal services module available (https://drupal.org/project/Services) that you could use for a web API interface between your app and Drupal to access it's objects.
This Stackoverflow post also may provide some answers, Web application integration with Drupal -- I have been involved with successful back-office business applications that utilize a CMS such as Drupal extending it using custom modules and an additional database for custom data objects.
Related
Let me start with a bit of background: I'm helping a non-profit organization that would like to have a browser-based application that is backed by Salesforce, but has very specific requirements.
I see Salesforce has a REST API that we can call, so we can develop a standalone application to serve the web pages they want and use the REST API to call Salesforce when needed.
I'm wondering if there is a way to host a web application directly on Salesforce; this way we don't have to have a separate application server. Any recommendations or pointers to documentation/open source products is greatly appreciated.
Yes, you can create services that will allow your app to hit Salesforce
Depending on the type of application, yes you can host it on salesforce using the Salesforce Sites feature, also you can develop and host your app on Heroku which is owned by salesforce and can sync data to and from salesforce using Heroku Connect, or you can build and host it on another service like AWS and connect via the REST API. You just need to investigate and choose the option that best fits your use-case. One thing to be aware of is that there are API limits (the number of calls you can make to salesforce in a rolling 24hr period). Depending the the needs of the app be sure to see if those limits will be an issue. Because if the app makes constant calls to salesforce that could be an issue. But there are things you can do to get around that, like caching.
Yes, both Force.com Sites and Site.com features allow you to host webpages on the Force.com Platform. The markup is stored in Visualforce Pages and can use Apex to access records in the Database. I have migrated multiple websites (including our company's www.mkpartners.com) to Force.com using Force.com Sites.
One thing to keep in mind is that you are limited to 500,000 views per month and the rendering of a page with images that are also stored on the platform will incur a single view for the page and a single view for each image. If you already have a very popular website, I wouldn't migrate. If you're a small business or nonprofit, then it should be fine.
Another thing to keep in mind is that dynamic functionality based on records in the database will not work during maintenance windows. There is the ability to upload a static version of your website to be rendered during these windows though.
I have a Drupal 7 site and I want to create a mobile application that will retrieve data from my Drupal site and will also create content of a specific content type.
This content type is very simple. - It contains the following:
* A title
* A body (long text)
* A picture (an image which has to be uploaded to the Drupal site).
I see that there are quite a few modules : restful, restws, services and more...
Which modules do you recommend for my scenario ?
I have used RestWS and Services modules.
RestWS is a simpler module providing CRUD operations for all Drupal resources (nodes, comments, users, etc) built on Entity API.
Services module provides far more functionality but may be overkill for your case. Beyond the functionality provided by RestWS it also provides support for message-oriented or RPC-style web services like SOAP, XML-RPC.
You can also configure your own 'service endpoints'.
If your requirements are simple enough then RestWS may be the most light-weight option, however if you need more configuration or customization options then Services will be the best choice.
I have a app and I need develop a restfull api to be used for this app.
Is liferay a valid option to develop this (using the service builder and persistence layer of liferay) to expose my service api to be used for the app?
I have in mind the performance and availability to this services.
what another option (to develop the api rest) i should consider for this purpose
Thanks
I expect for your replies.
Regards
Liferay can act as a rest server by service buider (I'm not sure it will support any RESTful operation, but only GET/POST).
By this way you can inherit the interesting features provided such as:
- users, roles and groups
- ready scalable platform
- hibernate+ehcache already configured
Ecc... by the other hand, it will bring a great burden to you... so in my mind, if you are interested to other Liferay native features, then you can use it.
On contrary, there are other ligther frameworks for achieving your needs (just think to Spring MVC, it can implement any other restful method, like so PUT/DELETE... and it is more configurable)... so in this case it will ask you to do a bit more work by hand... but you will not "fight" with a complex platform if it is not necessary.
(In the first hypothesis, don't forget to give an eye to the "Liferay Mobile SDK")
thanks for answer.
In fact, I am interested in use the features of liferay like users, groups, profiles, persistence layer and the web content to manager some resources in the app.
My question is thinking in the performance and scalability of the services layer for this app, if is factible use only liferay to expose all the service to the app need and if her performance will be appropriate.
regards.
I have currently a visual studio that contains 3 projects :
MyApp.Models : Contains all my models with Code-First migrations
MyApp.Web : Contains my main website, only with MVC
MyApp.Pass : Contains a subdomain website, for customers.
We have new projects and we need to have those things :
A WebAPI that can be consumes by my main website, my pass website, a backoffice website, and a mobile application
a backoffice website that consumes WebApi, built with AngularJS
A mobile application that consumes WebApi, built with Xamarin
How can i layer my visual studio solution to only have one WebAPI that can be consume by all my differents websites/mobile app ?
Best regards,
I am currently building a side project - viewingbooker.com which is exactly the setup you are looking for.
What you need to bare in mind is that web api and mvc website have 2 different authentication techniques. Web Api 2 makes amazingly easy to authorise users from eg. xamarin mobile apps. Token is issued and is generally valid for 14 days of inactivity.
I have few projects within my solutions. Most importantly you need a separate project for your business logic. I also use DI to test my business logic as I go.
For website, I serve data as JSON from standard Controllers. For my mobile app, I have a separate web api project that serves the data separately. They both use business logic project so it keeps code redundancy to the minimum.
Remember that mobile app is not a website which you can quickly fix. If you end up using the same models and controllers for website and mobile apps, any change you make will brake your mobile apps and not all users have auto upgrade feature switched on on their mobile devices.
So I recommend you have a standard website with its own models and controllers, which is consumed by angular/knockout etc. Web API 2 project with its own models and controllers. Business logic project in the form of different services accessible by its interfaces so it's easier to test it. And don't get too paranoid with code redundancy that is different controllers, models for website/mobile. This approach will save you a lot of headache in the future - talking from experience.
I want to know different options available when we are connecting asp.net mvc application to database.
What are pros and cons of each method and what is best method to choose.
In Traditional asp.net web form application i am using DAL approach, which seems to be very useful to me so far even while dealing in shared hosting environment. I want solution which i can apply in shared hosting environment.
Thank you everyone :)
On the website Mikesdotnetting.com, there is an article titled ASP.NET MVC is not all about Linq to SQL. Basically what the article talks about is taking a standard ASP.NET web forms n-layered application and moving it into the world of MVC. The only things that are changed are the actual web forms into views. He leaves much of the application as is, the data access layer, the entity objects, the business rules, etc. From reading the article and seeing what you're asking, I think you can easily use what you know (your DAL) and combine that with MVC.
Good luck on your project, and hope this helps some.
Original Web form based application article:
Building Layered Web Applications with Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0
I use the the following for the data access:
Entity Framework (Code First)
Windsor Container for dependency injection set up with the repository pattern to make my controllers testable without having a database.
Blog post using EF Code First with MVC
Explanation Repository Pattern
Blog post about using MVC3 and Castle Windsor
There are different Ways to Connect to Databases for ASP.NET MVC web application using ENTITY FRAMEWORK :
Code-First
Db-First
Model-First
Code First approach lets you generate databases and datasets automatically .
Use it if you are developing a large Web application and expecting changes of the Models in Future. So you can alter a database after making changes in the Code Accordingly.
Db-First lets you generate models automatically giving good control over Databases. Make sure there is a Database Admin working in the application.
Model-First Approach is not good option as developer would not be having control over both Model and Database.