For many people, services like Google Drive and Dropbox are becoming the go to destinations for their documents. APIs provided by these services open the door for many types of useful integrations with Drupal, such as:
- Automatically create nodes for Google documents
- Display a dynamic list of Dropbox files in a block
- Insert Webform submissions into a Google spreadsheet
- Allow Drupal users to upload files into a shared Dropbox folder
- Provide your users with a way to easily save Drupal files into their Google Drive
- etc
Along with the APIs, these types of integrations are made possible with some Drupal contrib modules and maybe a little PHP hacking. But the API implementations have been evolving, and getting things working can be tricky,
In this session, we'll take a look at a number of approaches – showing what's possible, what's easy, and what's hard. We'll review several use cases, including an integration with Organic Groups.
In addition to reviewing examples of features that you can implement today, we'll explore how to leverage a cloud storage service as a means of reducing cost – by moving some or all of your Drupal files to a provider such as Google Cloud Storage, Rackspace Cloud Files, or Amazon S3 – all without changing where your Drupal site is hosted.
INTENDED AUDIENCE:
Part technical, part tactical, this session aims to provide the audience with a lay of the land – not only focusing on development options but on the relative levels of effort and challenges associated with these types of integrations. It will be ideal for developers, project managers, team leads, and anyone interested in Drupal filesystem integrations.
Note: This session was originally presented at Drupaldelphia 2013 and has been expanded and updated.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Dave Sawyer is Solutions Architect at OHO Interactive – a proud sponsor of DrupalCamp NJ 2014. Dave specializes in architecting Drupal solutions and scoping large Drupal projects – with specific expertise in solutions for publishers and online communities. He has 15 years experience in web development and has been developing with Drupal since version 5. Dave has worked as a consultant for Adobe Systems, Bloomsbury Publishing, and The Vineyard Gazette. You can follow him on Twitter at @cmsdave