Image Assist macro and web services

Ah, sounds cool. My thoughts on moving the data are:

* It looks messy to the "average" user to have that great long string of stuff in the body - the content publishing team where I work now are easily confused. It's fine inline, but it would be even better from a usability perspective if it wasn't - the whole point is this module is for users who are not 'advanced', otherwise they'd just use HTML, so the simpler the sudo-mark-up, the better, IMHO. If you disagree, disregard. It's your prerogative. ;-)

* Over-writing the 'teaser' (current behaviour) is a problem, for reasons already described, so adding attached images to their own array would be preferable (perhaps a separate feature request on Image Assist?)

Oh, I see! You're correct. I'm using the Services module to syndicate nodes over XML-RPC:
http://drupal.org/project/services

One of the bundled web services is node.load, which returns the 'load' state of the node as an array to the remote client (another Drupal site). I also created an Image service myself - see this blog post:
http://www.drupaler.co.uk/blog/soa-and-drupal-services-module/58

So I already have a module which fetches nodes from a remote server. Some of those nodes will be of type 'image' and another service method call fetches their attached image files as well. As the distribution server (the one hosting the services themselves) has Image Assist installed, and *some* remote instances may have too, I need to handle the Image Assist mark-up and macro tags too. Hence what I am trying to do on the client side is something like this:

if (module_exists('img_assist')) {
  ... some logic to make sure the image referred to by the macro tag exists locally
} else {
  ... some replace logic to strip out the macro tags
}

I don't want the mark-up, because I don't know if the image even exists yet, so it would be much nicer if the mark-up could be generated on 'view', not 'load'. That way node.load would return a nice, clean node body with no generated HTML and just the macro tags, which I can deal with.

For now my requirements are unusual perhaps, but I think SOA is going to become increasingly important. There is discussion around adding web services to core for D7. =)

Sounds like the future is bright. =)

I'm slightly confused as to how I got both mark-up *and* macro tags when I node_load() a node with Image Assist images in it? I've uninstalled the module again for now, so I can't double check, but I was getting something like this:

  [body] => [image assist macro tag]

<span><img src="http://www.distribution-site.tld/sites/distribution-site.tld/files/images/foo.jpg" ... /></span> (corresponding mark-up)

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat, vel illum dolore eu feugiat nulla facilisis at vero eros et accumsan et iusto odio dignissim qui blandit praesent luptatum zzril delenit augue duis dolore te feugait nulla facilisi.

  [teaser] => [image assist macro tag]

Whereas I expected something more like:

  [body] => [image assist macro tag]

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat, vel illum dolore eu feugiat nulla facilisis at vero eros et accumsan et iusto odio dignissim qui blandit praesent luptatum zzril delenit augue duis dolore te feugait nulla facilisi.

  [teaser] => Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud...

  [img_assist] => array(
         [0] => [image assist macro tag]
  )

Hmmm, ok - I'll investigate further, but it's actually Views which is loading the node. Convoluted, but I call the Services module's views.getView method, which executes a view that returns the nodes. I know it's using 'load' op being invoked by Views in this case because I have to use the 'load' op if I want to make things available to the service in one of my modules. I'll investigate and come back if I find anything significant.

Thanks!

Hi - sorry, I had to drop this due to other development pressures. It will probably take me a while to re-visit, so I'll close this issue and raise if necessary in the future.