Hi, I'm using this module to help the Denver Public Library take its Creating Communities site to the next level. So far it works well in my limited testing, nice job!

We have two needs that the current code doesn't seem to address:

  1. Organic Groups integration

    We need users to be able to post a ContentDM item into an Organic Group. Ideally they'd be able to do this from the search/browse results listing, rather than having to click on a result, wait while the wrapper node is created, and then posting it into a group. So I'm planning to enhance the results listings with OG integration.

  2. Add a Views field for ContentDM images

    From what I can tell, many or all of the ContentDM metadata fields are available in the views support, but for image items the image itself isn't available as a view field. I'd think almost anyone using this module would benefit from having a view fields for the image, wondering if you have worked on this? It seems that the ContentDM URLs for retrieving the images are totally flexible regarding scaling, height, and width – so I am contemplating imagecache integration here as well, where the field formatter would read height/width/scale info from the selected imagecache preset and form the remote image URL to match that.

I am about to begin coding this stuff for a prototype, but wanted to reach out first to see your thoughts. Would you be open to patches for these features? Hopefully we can collaborate!

Comments

markj’s picture

markj commented

Both excellent ideas. WRT the OG integration, if you want to develop an add-on module that handles the OG stuff, I'd be happy to add a hook or something similar to the results item template so so you could grab individual items. Let me know what you'd need, or if I'm misunderstanding the problem.

Adding images to Views, yes, that's an obvious one I missed. Would adding the thumbnails do, or do you see a use case for adding larger images as well? Don't forget that a CONTENTdm item can have any kind of content file attached (video, etc.). If we did just stick to thumbnails, would we need imagecache?

laken’s picture

laken commented

For OG integration, yup, a hook to add content into the results items would be great. I'm working on some prototype code already, and will post more details tomorrow.

WRT to the view image field, I think people are used to the flexibility that imagefield & imagecache provide when used with views, so I'd aim to provide a similar flexibility. Since the ContentDM backend seems easily able to deliver any image derivative (scale/width/height) I'd aim to make it as flexible as possible, letting people define their own presets and deciding what's a thumbnail and what's a larger image, just as we do with views/imagefield/imagecache. I see the ContentDM API has separate getthumbnail and getimage calls, and I'm not sure what the difference is – any reason to stick with thumbnails?

markj’s picture

markj commented
Title: Organic Groups integration & enhanced Views integration » Organic Groups integration

I've moved the discussion of integration of images into Views moved to http://drupal.org/node/1245214 and renamed the title of this issue to cover only OG integration.

laken’s picture

laken commented

OG integration now has its own project: http://drupal.org/sandbox/laken/1285880

markj’s picture

markj commented

Woot! Nice to see a useful addon module like this one. Thanks for doing this.

markj’s picture

markj commented
Status: Active » Closed (fixed)

Module now lives at http://drupal.org/project/contentdm_og