[development] Curl-based content generation

[M. Fioretti]

On Thu, Feb 05, 2009 15:41:15 PM +0100, Martin Stadler wrote:
> This cannot be a general approach to add content to an arbitrary Drupal 
> site. Your points are valid and if you need that you need to write a 
> module providing an API or use SQL directly.

I am well aware that this job must be (partly) redone for each Drupal
site one needs to work. I'm fine with that, but I want a solution
which works even if I have no shell access to the server where Drupal
runs, or if I cannot install modules there. 

> What I'm trying to do is writing a very custom one-time script to
> add content automatically to a certain site.

same for me, really. Ditto for the rest of your reply.

So we agree (I think) that the problem is not writing scripts manually
for each site we want to access, is to avoid, if possible, lots of
guesses and blind trials just to know what we should write in those
scripts. This is where, I think, we'd both need help from the core
developers who knows Drupal sql tables in detail.

Important: at least for me, there is no problem to run sql queries on
the server to get all the fields I should fill via Curl. That is a
one-time job I can do myself or ask the webmaster to do for me. When I
said above "solution which works even without shell access" I refer to
when I _use_ the script (**) which I'd write using the info which I
hope to find through this list.

(**) Once written, a curl script would only need the http port open,
so it would work behind any firewall I've come across so far. Whereas
to run scripts on the server, even if I had a shell account, I would
need the ssh port to use them, which may or may not be open in
some places.

Marco
-- 
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