Drupal syndication
UA Webmasters
May 8, 2013
Margrit McIntosh
Moving content into and out of
Drupal sites
Drupal site
File
Other site
Drupal site
Overview
1. Creating outgoing content
– Views: add a Feed (RSS, CSV, XML)
2. Consuming incoming content
– Consuming Feeds or files
– Migrating content between Drupal sites
3. Use case: Creating nodes from XML feed
4. Use case: Creating nodes from EDS records
via LDAP
Overview: Modules
• Aggregator (optional Drupal core)
• Views
– Views data export – for creating CSV or XML feeds
• Feeds
– Feeds Tamper
– Feeds XPath Parser – for incoming XML feeds
• LDAP
• UUID
• Services - allows a Drupal site to provide web
services via multiple interfaces (REST, XMLRPC,
JSON, JSON-RPC, SOAP, AMF, etc.)
Not covered: using the LDAP module for user
provisioning, user authentication, or user
authorization.
Overview
1. Creating outgoing content
– whole-site RSS publishing
http://yoursite.com/rss.xml
– Views: add a Feed (RSS, CSV, XML)
2. Consuming incoming content
– Consuming Feeds or files
– Migrating content between Drupal sites
3. Use case: Creating nodes from XML feed
4. Use case: Creating nodes from EDS records
via LDAP
Demo: Exporting RSS Feed
• Create and populate content type to export
via feed
• Create a View and use the Feed plugin
• If needed, edit content type to add fields to
Teaser view mode
• Note that all fields will be contained in the
<Description>
Demo: Exporting
CSV and XML Feeds
• Install Views Data Export module
• In a View, add your fields, then
– add Data export (default is CSV)
– (or) add Data export and modify to XML
If exporting XML, check your feed to make sure
it is not malformed.
Overview
1. Creating outgoing content
– Views: add a Feed (RSS, CSV, XML)
2. Consuming incoming content
– Consuming Feeds or files
– Migrating content between Drupal sites
3. Use case: Creating nodes from XML feed
4. Use case: Creating nodes from EDS records
via LDAP
Incoming: Aggregator
• Optional core module Aggregator
• Does not make nodes
• Useful for simple uncomplicated presentation
of incoming feeds
Incoming: Feeds
• Can import or aggregate data as nodes, users,
taxonomy terms or simple database records
• Receives RSS/Atom, CSV, OPML
• Feeds XPathParser lets you map bits from raw
XML feed to fields
• Feeds ImageGrabber lets you import images
to an image field
• Feeds Tamper lets you massage fields
example: csv file import
Overview
1. Creating outgoing content
– Views: add a Feed (RSS, CSV, XML)
2. Consuming incoming content
– Consuming Feeds
– Migrating content between Drupal sites
3. Use case: Creating nodes from XML feed
4. Use case: Creating nodes from EDS records
via LDAP
Overview
1. Creating outgoing content
– Views: add a Feed (RSS, CSV, XML)
2. Consuming incoming content
– Consuming Feeds
– Migrating content between Drupal sites
3. Use case: Creating nodes from XML feed
4. Use case: Creating nodes from EDS records
via LDAP
Demo: COM D7 OPA News
Overview
1. Creating outgoing content
– Views: add a Feed (RSS, CSV, XML)
2. Consuming incoming content
– Consuming Feeds
– Migrating content between Drupal sites
3. Use case: Creating nodes from XML feed
4. Use case: Creating nodes from EDS records
via LDAP
A word of warning:
Creating a directory from EDS does NOT get rid
of these problems:
1. incorrect data
2. disliked data
3. data curation responsibility
4. expiring outdated nodes
EDS to nodes via LDAP
• You will need to get an account to access EDS:
need two people who are FERPA-trained to be
account holders.
• You will need to have the LDAP Extension to
PHP installed on your server.
• Multivalue attributes will not get into a multivalue field unless you hack the module
So you’ve decided to LDAP your Directory. . .
Now that you have your EDS account and your
server is set up . . .
• Decide what attributes you want
http://sia.uits.arizona.edu/eds_attributes
• Create content type to hold people
• Set up your LDAP Server
• Start running some test queries
Demo: test query
Feed Importer
• For testing: create a query that returns a
handful of records
• Create a new content type just for the
Importer to attach to.
• Set up the Feed Importer and do your
mapping
• Test it and see if it creates a handful of nodes
Demo: COM D7 People
with Feeds Tamper
Overview
1. Creating outgoing content
– Views: add a Feed (RSS, CSV, XML)
2. Consuming incoming content
– Consuming Feeds or files
– Migrating content between Drupal sites
3. Use case: Creating nodes from XML feed
4. Use case: Creating nodes from EDS records
via LDAP