[development] Metadata question

[Larry Garfield]

Drupal doesn't really distinguish between "data" and "metadata" formally.  
Most things are "nodes" (item of content).  A node has "fields".  Whether a 
field is "data" or "metadata" really depends only on whether or not to choose 
to display it.  

There are also modules that add non-field "stuff" to a node, such as 
taxonomies, upload and attachments, etc.  I suppose one could think of those 
as a form of "metadata", but Drupal doesn't really distinguish between the 
two, as I said, since those are exposed to the theme layer as well.  

Nodes have a reasonably consistent storage mechanism.  "Add-on stuff" tends to 
have a storage mechanism per-stuff (all of it in the database, of course, 
except files which live on disk).  

The handbooks on the web site have more.  If you still have questions, try the 
support at drupal.org mailing list, the forums, or the #Drupal-Support IRC 
channel.  This list is more for active development of the core system.  
Thanks.

On Sunday 18 March 2007 7:25 pm, Gabriel Rossetti wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I am trying to figure out how metadata is used in Drupal and I'm a bit
> lost. I am going to add new metadata to objects (nodes?) for a project I'm
> working on,
> and I came across flexinodes, node, taxonomy, relationships, and I need
> someone
> to clarify things up some for me. Are all things stored as the same
> object? Is an attachment
> (pdf, doc, jpeg, etc) stored as the same thing? Does it have metadata?
> Does regular content
> (non-attachment) also have metadata? Is it also stored like attachment
> metadata (if it has some)?
>
> Thank you,
> Gabriel

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Larry Garfield			AIM: LOLG42
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