Packt Publishing announces the publication of Drupal Web Services by Trevor James.

This book covers efficient Drupal Web services that help you to speed up your connections to Web applications. It will compel you to learn more and more about Web services and use them to easily share data and content resources between different applications and machines. This book also covers the usage of each Web service for different purposes. It provides step-by-step instructions on integrating Web services and Web applications with your Drupal powered Web site.

Drupal Web services will show you how to work with all kinds of Web Services and Drupal. The book shows you how to integrate Amazon.com content into your site; add multimedia and video to your site using video services including CDN2 and Kaltura. You will learn how to prevent spam using CAPTCHA, reCAPTCHA and Mollom. You will also learn to explore the different types of Web services Drupal offers and can integrate with using the Services module and XML-RPC. Next you will learn to push content from Google documents, deploying this text and image based content as Drupal nodes.

Next you'll integrate your site with Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and show how to post content from Drupal to these social networking applications automatically. At the end you will be enlightened with authentication methods for integrating Web services with Drupal.

What you will learn from this book:

  • Become well versed with Drupal Web services and Web service integration.
  • Integrate the Flickr photo sharing app with your Drupal site.
  • Integrate Amazon.com content with your Drupal site so you can serve your site users a rich e-commerce based experience.
  • Get real time shipping quotes from FedEx and integrate these with your Ubercart powered shopping cart.
  • Add video content to your Drupal site using CDN2 and Kaltura.
  • Install and configure the Drupal Services module.
  • Prevent spam submissions using CAPTCHA, reCAPTCHA and Mollom.
  • Deploy Google document content to your Drupal site via XML-RPC.
  • Pick any Drupal content and post it to Twitter.
  • Integrate Facebook with Drupal using the Drupal for Facebook module.
  • Discuss Drupal Web service authentication methods to enhance your site security.

Approach

A practical hands-on guide to integrating Web services with your Drupal Web site. It will start from basic understanding of web services to how your Drupal site can be integrated with web applications using web services.

Who this book is written for

If you’re are a Drupal user, webmaster, or an administrator who wants to integrate Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, LinkedIn, Kaltura and Mollom with your Drupal site then this book will be a good addition to your Drupal library.

You do not need to have programming experience to use this book. Drupal Web Services is written for anyone who works with Drupal on a daily basis.

Get 20% off!

Packt Publishing has secured an exclusive 20% discount for you when you buy through PacktPub.com. Enter the following discount code at checkout in the shopping cart: DrupalWeb20 (case sensitive). As with all of Packt’s Drupal books, Packt donates a percentage of every Drupal book sale directly to the Drupal Association.

You can purchase the book here.

Want a Sample?

To help promote the content provided within this book, Packt is generous enough to provide two sample articles (chapter excerpts) from the book:

About the author

Trevor James is a Drupal consultant and Web developer based in Middletown, MD, USA. Trevor has been designing websites for 13 years using a combination of HTML, XHTML, CSS, and ColdFusion, and has been using Drupal intensively for over 3 years. Trevor’s focus is on building Web portals for education, non-profit, medical systems, and small business environments.

He is interested in best methods of integrating Web services with Drupal sites, Drupal site performance, and using CCK, Views, and Panels to develop front end interfaces to support data intensive websites.

He loves teaching people about Drupal and how to use this excellent open source content management framework.

Trevor co-authored the Packt title Drupal 6 Performance Tips, published in February, 2010.

Trevor created an 11+ hour video tutorial series titled Introduction to Drupal 6 for VTC (Virtual Training Company) in 2009. The video is available via the VTC website here:
http://www.vtc.com/products/Introduction-To-Drupal-6-Tutorials.htm

Comments

davideads’s picture

I've become incredibly frustrated that certain Packt books continue to get play on the Drupal.org home page. Couldn't there be a section of the site for resources like books? Or maybe they could be featured on Drupal.com, seeing as the .com implies commercial interests.

I'm not here to debate the merits of Packt's Drupal books generally, or Mr. James' books specifically (though they both suffer from some critical quality issues in my experience), but to call into question the fairness and wisdom of promoting books (which exist primarily to make someone money) on the Drupal.org home page. Should new Drupal shops be news on the d.o home page? How about subscription-based hosted services?

Perhaps once upon a time these sorts of posts might make sense -- but now there are countless Drupal shops, books, and services. It seems to me that new book announcements on the Drupal home page violate the idea that Drupal.org is a site for the community.

mfer’s picture

This comment on this post is not the appropriate place for this conversation. It should take place on an issue in the webmasters issue queue. Make sure to check that an existing issues does not already exist. Anything should be in reference to our site documentation on how to get something promoted to the homepage.

Additionally, arguments like

It seems to me that new book announcements on the Drupal home page violate the idea that Drupal.org is a site for the community.

are an individual opinion and are not very convincing.

Now, if you look at the schedule of items that people have requested for the homepage you see it is fairly empty. If no one is putting items up to be put on the homepage and someone comes along with a book to be posted there I'd expect it to be published. If there competition for the homepage space then I could see a problem. There simply isn't.

davideads’s picture

You are definitely right that I should have used the issue queue to address this. Indeed, I had intended to watch the queue and kvetch about this (in my opinion, somewhat unseemly) practice that certain publishers and authors seem to engage in. I'll do it in the future.

As far as this being my individual opinion, you're right. You say that like it's a bad thing. But I'd go back to my original line of questioning: Wouldn't "buy my awesome new Drupal service (way cheaper than Acquia!)" often be considered inappropriate for the d.o home page and be likely to be shot down? If so how is "buy my Drupal book" all that much different, especially now that there are a tremendous number of Drupal books, trainings, and services?

Lack of competition/content doesn't seem like a sufficient reason to publish something to the d.o home page, and is irrelevant to the point I'm trying to make.

mcaudy’s picture

Hello David,

I think you are over-reacting to this announcement. The book topic is something of great interest to many Drupal developers, and I am very glad that it was announced here, where I could see it.

The page gives a very detailed description of the book, and you can get a very good idea of whether you are interested without ever having to leave this page. That is: it is not just a brief "Here is my book", with a link to the store site.

I don't know about Drupal's policies about where to make such comments, but I think it was reasonable for you to make your's here, where people can see them, rather than some issue queue.

Regards,

Michael Caudy

davideads’s picture

...I just don't think it is the d.o home page -- it seems impossible to do fairly. I agree the book could be useful, but who is reviewing it to make sure the book itself is accurate? What if it turns out to be a ripoff?

Part of my (over) reaction is because this is a pattern for this publisher and author, and the books themselves are of dubious quality in my opinion (see some of the comments about similar titles featured on the Drupal.org home page).

I'd rather see this issue sidestepped via a more formal policy regarding what is appropriate to post on the d.o home page (which I'll suggest in the web masters queue).

ssquirrel’s picture

and I also think it would be of better use for the community if all books and that kind of resources would be in one place. A place where everyone could post information about books, preferably with a voting system to help others – how convenient!

I would even consider taking it a step further, what about a learning section with books, videos, tutorials, articles etc. free or with a charge (all marked up so one could easily find what one is looking for. Let the community fill it with information, I think it would be great if you find a good tutorial, videocast or book that you could tip others about it!

juan_g’s picture

For example, a new book on Drupal, or a site using Drupal explaining how they built it, etc. If there is the "danger" of they making some extra money as a secondary effect, well, they deserve it for being interesting/useful for the community.

Drupal is used by many non-profits, and they are a very important part of the community, but there is not limitation to its use, for example to make a living professionally.

In my opinion, only the interest/usefulness should be taken into account when publishing news, not whether they are amateur or professional, like for example in the old Olympics controversy until amateurism requirements were practically abandoned about twenty years ago. ;)

If an issue is opened on this, please post a link so that we can talk about it in a more suitable place.

stodge’s picture

Are there any books that teach me how to connect MY site to a Drupal site using web services, such as XML-RPC or JSON-RPC? This is one are where Drupal is weak.

narcissus921’s picture

I've been waiting for this book! I was very pleased with Performance Tips, so hopefully this will be just as good. I just bought the eBook+physical version, and as such, the eBook was 85% off, and the book 10%. Your code made the book 20% off, so that works on the multi-format purchase as well!

Looking forward to reading this!

Thanks for the awesomeness.

bsenftner’s picture

Which version of the Services module does this book reference in the portions discussing your own development of web services? The Services.module is on the cusp of a new major release... as such, a book covering this topic includes discussions for converting between the two versions?

drupalwebservices’s picture

The book covers the following version of the Services module (in chapter 6): Services 6.x-2.2. This was the current version of the module at the time of the book's writing. Currently Services is at 6.x-2.4: http://drupal.org/project/services

-Trevor James

gdd’s picture

The Services changes between 2.2 and 2.4 comprise only of bug fixes and a security release, so there should be no conflict between what is in the book and what is currently released. Even when Services 3 gets an official release (in about a month I hope) we will leave 2.x active and supported.

yautja_cetanu’s picture

Is this about Drupal 7 or 6?

dsnoeck’s picture

As in the sample "Drupal and Twitter" it offer you to start by downloading the 6.x-3.0-beta2 twitter module, I think the book is around Drupal 6.

- Damien
:: Keep Open Spirit ::

markshust’s picture

Great, this book is obsolete before it's even published.

juan_g’s picture

You know, there are always two current Drupal versions. D5 and D6 now, D6 and D7 since the D7 release probably this month and more or less for a couple of years, until the D8 release.

Funny, very recently there have been complaints about D7 books being published, and now about D6 books. Anyway, I think most people is happy when more and more Drupal books are being written. That's really great.

tgeller’s picture

I wrote about this issue several times, most recently at http://tomgeller.com/content/timing-also-drupal-7-new-features-video-ser... . I proposed:

"...these are problems that come with Drupal's growing popularity, and are therefore happy ones for us as a community to face. (Did any projects depend on when Drupal 4's release date? Probably not.) This is a challenge I hope we meet better with Drupal 8. My own suggestion: Define regular releases with an absolute schedule, much like Ubuntu does. That will not only help the commercial organizations who depend on a stable release date; it will, I think, remove some pressure of uncertainty from Drupal developers themselves."

---
Tom Geller * tomgeller.com * Oberlin, Ohio
See my lynda.com videos about Drupal

drupalwebservices’s picture

Correct, the book is focused on Drupal 6.x, however users of 5.x, 6.x and 7.x versions of Drupal will find much of the book's discussion and coverage useful.

-Trevor James

Wolfflow’s picture

Although that I can understand some of you having a exasperated reaction I have to say that Packt Publishing do support a lot Drupal.org and the Community and I welcome this release and announcement.

To the discussion that the redesign could evaluate to manage this kind of news differently, it looks that in the last time really very few announcement are made on the front page of Drupal.org.

The cause of this we all know: many of the Drupal.org administrators and manager are still very busy in contributing to the final release of Drupal 7 and most all efforts goes still in this direction and it's good to be so.

Just to underline I do appreciate that even with the forthcoming of D7 there is still a lot that can be learned and implemented for D6 and I am sure that many serious and full engaged Drupal Evangelist know that D6 will last and be a mayor focus for old and new sites for the next 1 year and that a new Drupal version will have to go out of a period of use as to be that stable as we know Drupal 5 was and now 6 is.

So thanks for this new publication I will for sure get it.

Best Regards

Contact me for drupal projects in English, German, Italian, Drupal Hosting Support.

sergiu.popa’s picture

Here you can find another fresh book from Packt Publishing: Drupal 7 Module Development

kaakuu’s picture

Rather than being a Facebook-slave, I will like to know how I can integrate my Drupal site with other sites - for example

How can other site users use a "my-drupal-site" login button from or on other sites
How can I allow other sites to add a "like" button of my site on other sites

If this is not still there in drupal.org custom codes or downloadable module for those who purchase the book will really be a great web service and service in general.

BetoAveiga’s picture

Thanks for the book. I'm sure will be very useful :)

Drupal Backend / Frontend Developer

asked’s picture

Highly energetic book, I liked that bit.