[development] Data API and JSON/XML for Drupal 6 status

[Nedjo Rogers]

Dries wrote:
> here is my top-6 things I'd like to see us focus on.  In
> order of priority:
>  5. Paving the path for webservices: data API, being more XML/REST/
> JSON friendly, etc.

Three relevant patches in the queue are:

1. http://drupal.org/node/145551, Enable dynamic page loading and rendering 
into different formats (JSON, XML)

This patch enables e.g. a normal page request made with jQuery to be 
returned automatically in JSON format. There is a sample module with the 
patch to be used for testing.

Ideas needed: how could we use the menu system to detect which format to 
render a particular theme call in? This patch needs a lot of review and 
improvement.

2. http://drupal.org/node/113435, Data API, first steps

(See also, for context, http://drupal.org/node/145684, Data API, further 
steps.)

This patch introduces a consistent set of drupal_load(), drupal_save(), and 
drupal_delete() methods for different object types as well as a 
hook_dataapi() to replace hook_nodeapi(), hook_taxonomy(), etc.

It also allows all of these methods to be overridden by contrib 
implementations. So, possibly, we could develop a schema-aware improved Data 
API in contrib during the 6.x cycle for merging into core before 7.

Would need a lot of testing and people wading in to fix and improve it if 
it's going to get in before code freeze.

3. http://drupal.org/node/140860, Consistent table names to facilitate CRUD 
operations

This is a simple update to provide consistently named tables. The payoff is 
that we could then implement e.g. drupal_load('term', 8) using a single 
generic schema-aware function, rather than needing separate load functions 
for each object type.