[support] Drupal as a PHP development framework?

[Daniel Carrera]

Hi Seth,

Thanks. That's a very useful answer, about how I should think about the 
application if I used Drupal. That I shouldn't see Drupal as a library 
that use, but rather see my app as a Drupal component.

I'll need time to think about whether this is what I'm looking for. I 
don't have a clear picture of what I want yet.

Thanks.

Daniel.


Seth Freach wrote:
> Daniel,
> Short answer: Yes.
> 
> I have been previously and currently am involved with a few web app 
> projects that were started or rewritten from scratch on Drupal.  In 
> fact, the reason that Drupal was chosen over any of the other CMS's 
> available is specifically because of its superiority amongst its peers 
> in the CMS space as a PHP development framework.
> 
> The most important thing in my experience is to make sure that you 
> approach the project from a correct perspective.  You'll get the best 
> results if you think of the app being constructed *with* Drupal, doing 
> it the Drupal way.  This is a very different thing than building it *on 
> top of* Drupal, where you try to reach down and leverage Drupal 
> functionality when it suits you.  This approach might cause you to 
> rethink a lot of the application and data architecture in a rewrite.  
> Drupal can do the job wonderfully, but know that it probably won't just 
> be a "rewrite", but rather a "redesign", from the data model on up.  
> Allowing Drupal to handle all of  your user management, for example, 
> sounds great, but thinking of how Drupal users are going to interact 
> with your application's data will force you to rethink how Drupal will 
> best do this.  Ideally, it would become less and less your application's 
> data and more and more Drupal's content, structured in the way that 
> Drupal organizes its content (nodes, CCK, possibly OG's, ...), and 
> accessed the way that Drupal accesses content (Views, perms, ...)
> 
> ...if that makes sense ;)
> 
> Seth