Data Management Applications with Drupal as Your Framework

Data Management Applications with Drupal as Your Framework John Romine UC Irvine, School of Engineering UCCSC, IR37, August 2013 jromine@uci.edu

What is Drupal? Open-source content management system PHP, MySQL, jquery 2%+ of all websites run Drupal Drupal 6: 2/2008 Drupal 7: 1/2011 Drupal 8: 1Q14? Rapid growth whitehouse.gov examiner.com

Why use Drupal? Content Management Framework built-in features user accounts profiles preferences access control permissions roles single-sign-on integration display of content actions templates lists of stuff (views) themeing forms processing validation database schema definition

What s a node? nid (String, 1 characters ) 5 vid (String, 2 characters ) 73 type (String, 4 characters ) page uid (String, 1 characters ) 1 title (String, 58 characters ) Data Management Applications with Drupal as Your Framework body (String, 31459 characters ) teaser (String, 0 characters )...

Data apps with Drupal: without code Fields: Content Constuction Kit (CCK) Views: Text field Select list Checkbox Radio buttons List Table Pager Filters Example: Cal State Monterey Bay Student CRM

Development approach: code A collection of related Drupal modules framework with different features for different areas rapidly deploy and update with Drupal tools built-in schema update drush make Data source/uplink: links to outside data sources financial academic data upload/import with cron & batch read-only data mirrors

Access Control control what actions a user can take modules define permissions edit blurfl content view blurfl content administer blurfl settings users assigned to roles collections of permissions each activity can check permissions exception: lists of stuff (performance) user_access( edit blurfl content )

Content access Drupal built-in: realms & grants per-node array of: realm grant id permissions (bool) view edit delete per-user array of: realm array of grant ids can be overridden by modules (allow/deny)

Content & Forms nodes represented as structured object form represented as structured array textfield checkbox radio button select / checkboxes textarea fieldset file upload per-field access check validation submit handler avoids CSRF XSS SQL-injections

Strategy: Aspect-Oriented (vs. MVC) modules fully implement their data no top-level integration control flow through "hooks" (actions) modules notified of activity through event callbacks: load data save data display content edit content update (save) content

Code: Permissions definition function student_activity_perm() { return array( 'edit student activity content', 'view student activity content', ); }

Code: schema definition $schema['student_activity'] = array( 'fields' => array( 'nid' => array( 'type' => 'int', 'unsigned' => TRUE, 'not null' => TRUE, 'default' => 0, ), 'vid' => array( 'type' => 'int', 'unsigned' => TRUE, 'not null' => TRUE, 'default' => 0, ),

Code: schema (continued) 'activity_type' => array( 'type' => 'char', 'length' => 32, 'not null' => FALSE, 'default' => '', ) 'activity_date' => array( 'type' => 'datetime', 'mysql_type' => 'date', 'not null' => FALSE, ), core schema update hook provided easily update existing site s schema to current

Code: Data load, insert function student_activity_load($node) { return student_fetch_record('student_activity', $node); } function student_activity_insert($node) { student_write_record('student_activity', $node); } student_write_record() a NULL-friendly version of drupal_write_record()

Code: Data update function student_activity_update($node) { if ($node->revision) { // treat it as a new record. student_activity_insert($node); } else { student_write_record('student_activity', $node, array('nid', 'vid')); } } similar functions for delete, delete revision

Code: form definition: text field $form['activity_date'] = array( '#type' => 'textfield', '#size' => 12, '#maxlength' => 10, '#title' => t('activity Date'), '#default_value' => isset($node->activity_date)? $node->activity_date : '', '#description' => t('mm/dd/yyyy'), );

Code: form definition: select list $form['activity_type'] = array( '#type' => 'select', '#title' => t('activity type'), #options => $activity_type_options, // assoc array '#default_value' => isset($node->activity_type)? $node->activity_type : '', );

Code: form validation (example) function mymodule_validate($node, &$form) { if (isset($node->end_time) && isset($node->start_time)) { if ($node->start_time > $node->end_time) { form_set_error('end_time', } } } t('an event may not end before it starts.'));

Code: routing & access control function student_menu() { $items['admin/settings/student'] = array( 'title' => 'Student', 'description' => 'Configure student module settings.', 'access callback' => 'user_access', 'access arguments' => array('administer student configuration'), 'page callback' => 'drupal_get_form', 'page arguments' => array('student_admin_settings'), 'type' => MENU_NORMAL_ITEM, ); Specify: URL/path, access control, page/form callback

Code: views integration $data['student_plan']['plan_notes'] = array( 'title' => t('plan notes'), 'help' => t("progress plan notes"), 'field' => array( 'handler' => 'student_handler_field', 'click sortable' => TRUE, 'access callback' => 'student_check_field_access', 'access arguments' => array('view', 'student plan', 'plan_notes'), ), Specify how this field is displayed per-field access control possible

Code: views integration (2) 'filter' => array( 'handler' => 'views_handler_filter_string', 'access callback' => 'student_check_field_access', 'access arguments' => array('view', 'student plan', 'plan_notes'), ), 'argument' => array( 'handler' => 'views_handler_argument_string', ), 'sort' => array( 'handler' => 'views_handler_sort', ),

Typical data handling module: lines chars 11 290 student_petition/student_petition.css 8 170 student_petition/student_petition.info 126 3159 student_petition/student_petition.install 15 489 student_petition/student_petition.js 465 14551 student_petition/student_petition.module 625 18659 total 300 lines of actual code in student_petition.module implements 6 petition fields database load/save/update form handling data display

Going forward: Drupal 7 & 8 Database layer: PDO Fields in core (table for each field!) Entities Templates: twig Framework: Symfony 2 Views in core