[consulting] Approaches for retrieving external site's data

[António P. P. Almeida]

On 17 Nov 2010 15h58 WET, tom at tomgeller.com wrote:

> Alfonso Montero Lopez <amontero at tinet.org> writes:
>
>> The missing gap is in how to move data from the custom app table to
>> Drupal.
>
> ...[possible solution]
>
>> *Create a [password-protected] RSS feed script for the source site
>> and fetch the leads from it to the Drupal extranet via FeedAPI and
>> alikes.
>
> Yup, this is basically what I'm doing right now. But one change: Use
> Feeds (http://drupal.org/project/feeds) instead. I think it's more
> capable and modern than FeedAPI et al.
>
> Victor Kane suggests:
>
>> The migrate module http://drupal.org/project/migrate was designed
>> for this kind of problem and is a joy to work with.
>
> ...if you have the chops for it. :) Migrate requires knowledge of
> PHP and a stronger grasp of technology generally than the
> point-and-click simplicity of Feeds. Migrate does appear more
> capable, though.

I disagree. Feeds demands knowing how to code also, unless your
migration is dead simple. E.g., if migrating from a another DB and
using CSV you need to massage the data before creating the CSV file
that is going to be used. For that you need coding.

Another approach is using a drush script with calls to the proper
Drupal API functions for creating/updating content.

--- appa