I have some code that I'm willing to share, but it will probably need some heavy refactoring. It works great of what I do, but it wasn't really designed with general consumption in mind. The general strategy is as follows:
1. Make sure the perl web service writes valid XHTML. 2. Write a general module that does http requests and gets the data based on get or post parameters that are passed in to a function. 3. Use PHP's SimpleXML to parse the data coming in and get its innards for display. (eg. $output .= $response->body->asXML();) 4. To make the extrnal data really embeded, develop a custom filter syntax so that you can embed data from the other application directly in a drupal page/panel, etc.
If you have forms in the perl code, you'd need to rebuild the forms using the forms api.
Lets take this off list. I have some general code that I'm willing to start a project with, and in fact have been meaning to. Would you be interested in collaborating on getting it ready for general consumption.
If you're interested, the best would probably be to contact me using my non-work email, metzlerd@metzlerd.com, but I can always be reached here, or via my drupal contact form on drupal.org.
Dave
-----Original Message----- From: support-bounces@drupal.org [mailto:support-bounces@drupal.org] On Behalf Of Gaurav Khambhala Sent: Thursday, April 16, 2009 12:38 AM To: support@drupal.org Subject: Re: [support] Can we make Drupal to use or display data from external application ?
Hi David,
Metzler, David wrote:
I ust the second strategy (web services) with great success. It's a little harder to get going, but looks nicer and is more versatile in the end.
Do you have any idea-reference-demo, how exactly I can proceed for the suggested option ?