For those that have not been to Denver or missed it, this session would be the same as given in Denver, see http://denver2012.drupal.org/program/sessions/drupalize-your-data-use-en...
Drupal 7 introduces entities, the foundational concept behind nodes, comments, users, terms, vocabularies and files. This session will introduce Drupal's entity API and depict how it can be leveraged to drupalize any data!
Historically, Drupal and all its modules primary dealt with nodes. Thus, one had to use nodes in order to fully make use of Drupal's power and flexibility. However, with Drupal 7 more and more modules start building upon entities instead, so the modules are applicable to all of Drupal's entities! Thankfully, the entity API allows exposing any data as "entities" what makes the data accessible by all those modules!
Want to use Views to list remote data? Use Rules for automation? Token replacements? Or build faceted searches with the Search API? Start drupalizing your data!
Outline:
1. Overview: Entities in core and the contrib entity API module
2. Entity property metadata: What is it good for?
3. How to provide a new entity type stored in Drupal's database
4. Integrating remote data as entities
5. Drupalizing data: An example use case // demo
In the end I'll elaborate on missing bits and possible further use cases. Also, we'll have a short look at what Drupal 8 entity API developments are going to bring to us.
Drupalize Your Data- use entities from Asociación Drupal on Vimeo.
