Building Web Apps With Drupal?

I like to think of drupal not as a simple website CMS but more of a platform for any web based development and i truly believe that there is no limted to what you can achieve with drupal so long as you are willing to learn about the inner working of the CMS. Im not talking about exactly how drupal is put together but instead, having an understanding of drupal very modular hook system. From doing a little reading recently i have already started to play around with creating my own modules for a project way beyond a simple website or blog.

I would say that drupal is a perfect platform for anything web based and the possibilites are endless! =D

Harris

A web application I am currently working on is FallenAsleep.com. It is being developed using Drupal 5.

Using Drupal makes web application development extremely easy, flexible, and secure. Drupal uses "hooks" which allow you to interact with the system's core functions. This makes upgrading painless and easy.

If you need any more information, just ask.

If you are going to do something CMS-related... sure.

But for any big, independent projects I would not use Drupal as a starting point. Drupal does have a good structure and a rich API. But you also constantly have to conform to these APIs, and if you're trying to do something that they were not intended for you may end up writing very bad code just to make it fit. For instance: I would never try to do something like SugarCRM based on Drupal ( http://www.sugarcrm.com ).

I would look to things that were written to be libraries to begin with, perhaps Horde or even smaller frameworks. You'll know what you need once you start coding.

I have a three-tiered approach. For basic websites with mostly static content I use Templation..

For low to medium budget projects where a lot of 'standard' functionality is required, Drupal is my tool of choice. It is second to none in the PHP world from a programmer's perspective.

For truly custom web apps I think a true framework gives you more leverage. Ruby on Rails is my framework of choice, but there are many great ones. Django and Seaside come to mind.

Drupal has the steepest learning curve, but it's also able to instantly provide 90% of what a typical client wants using existing modules. Drupal is definitely flexible enough to do anything, but there is also a lot of structural overhead. Using a web framework you can create an application to do exactly what you want without worrying about reusable components. Drupal on the other hand provides a ton of general purpose functionality out of the box, so you find a lot of hooks and settings adding to the complexity even though your particular app doesn't need most of it. Is the extra complexity worth it? If you're using significant portions of Drupal's functionality compared to what you are writing from scratch then Drupal is a good choice. The further away you go from Drupal's existing functionality or paradigms (eg. Drupals nodes don't model your content well), the more you will be fighting Drupal rather than taking advantage of it. That said, Drupal constrains you much less than other CMS architectures, and it does provide an awful lot of general purpose functionality such as forms and menus that could be used in any application.