External APIs and Drupal Strategies for Integrating External API - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

External APIs and Drupal

Strategies for Integrating External API Data

Introductions

• Luke Bainbridge
• lbainbridge (drupal.org)
• @midnightLuke (twitter)

Topics

• Drupal and APIs
• Data APIs
• The API landscape
• Caching strategy and implementation
• There will be ONE lolcat...

Data APIs

• Great way to add relevant information to

your site

• Can create richer content
• Can cause painful lag
• Lack of industry standards can cause

headaches

• All APIs are different and require different

approaches

• Services module can create powerful APIs

○ Services Entity ○ Services Views ○ oAuth ○ Services Token Access

• Drupal as a consumer

○ Suffers the same issues mentioned before ○ drupal_http_request() is swiss army chainsaw ■ ...or cUrl

Drupal and APIs

The Problem...

• Extremely large dataset,

accessible over API

• Data needs to be very

current

• Some pages require

large amount of API calls

The Solutions

Depend on the API

• Duplicate the data in Drupal
• Source data on request-by-request basis
• Build remote entity controller
• Use vendor widget
• Link to the external data source

Duplicate Data in Drupal

• All Drupal functionality and modules

available

• How do you keep data current?
• Can you obtain a list of resources?

Remote Entity Controller

• Work is being done to make this a reality!

○ Remote Entity API module

• Will depend heavily on a flexible API
• Local fields are possible

○ Wunderkraut’s blog on the subject

Our Solution

• Source data during page request
• Cache responses using drupal’s cache

functionality

• Provide abstract class for caching to allow

many different API implementations to store responses

• Use database abstraction conventions

The Response Cache

• A successful request is stored in the cache

○ “Successful” is API dependant

• Cache should be tuned to application and

flushable

• A cached response may affect the entire

site

• Responses can be manipulated in a variety
• f ways

Why Not the Page Cache?

• No gain for authenticated traffic
• No gain for common site-wide API calls
• Rate-limiting APIs
• You can still use it later!

Example: iTunes API

• Documentation:

○ http://www.apple. com/itunes/affiliates/resources/documentation/it unes-store-web-service-search-api.html

• Sandbox module

○ https://drupal.org/sandbox/lbainbridge/2152595

Tips

• Try to get everything in one request
• The static cache is your friend

○ drupal_static(__FUNCTION__)

• Be creative with files

○ Check timestamps ○ Queue updates to files

• Cache pages as well when possible

Conclusion

• APIs are powerful
• APIs are frustrating
• APIs are your friend

Questions? Discussion?