[development] Data API

[Frando (Franz Heinzmann)]

Khalid B schrieb:
> One conclusion from all this is that Form API needs to be
> renamed.
> 
> Any suggestions?
> 
> DAPI (Drupal API. Incomplete, since there is a lot of other
> things that are the Drupal API).
> 
What about dDAPI (drupal Data API)?

However, I'd say the *name* is by all means the least important point to 
discuss ;).

I've to say Mark's ideas are quite similar to something I thaught about 
sometimes. Recently, I realized a project based on CakePHP [1], a 
RoR-style MVC framework written in PHP. And I was just amazed how quick, 
clean and easy it is to realize what you want to have by using it. It 
would be great to have some more of the easy and simple way of 
development that comes with a good and well-done implentation of the MVC 
concepts. I'm not at all one of these guys who praise the MVC pattern as 
The One Way Of Web Development or The New Holy Grail, but my experiences 
  with CakePHP showed, that, if it's done in a good way, the MVC pattern 
is a robust, solid and rapid way of web development that can simplify 
web development in a good way.
I think by extending the FormAPI concept to a Data API we can ease and 
simplify drupal module development quite a lot. By adding some more 
"magic", as some scaffolding here and there or considering the fAPI 
arrays not as description of forms but as data models, lots of things 
(as different methods of interacting with a website, e.g. XML-RPC or 
import/export modules) would be far easier to realize.

regards,
frando

[1] http://cakephp.org