By keym on

Hi,

I am trying to decide whether to use drupal for an application development project we are starting, or to go with one of the custom php frameworks. We are not building an article/publishing type application. Rather, it is more of a web application.

Since Drupal has so much there, already working and tested together, my preference would be drupal.

Question: how flexible is drupal with respect to node/content types.

Is it fair to say, anything which can be represented as a record in a database table, can also be represented as a node type in drupal, which can then gain all the drupal advantages of indexing/searching/categorizing, multi-language, templating, user management, etc..?

If so, that would seem to be a real incentive for leveraging drupal in application development. If the website infrastructure is already there, and all one has to do is code up the application specific stuff - that would be great.

What module should I be looking at for doing this? I've heard of flexinode, CCK, but can't seem to find significant documentation on it. Any pointers would be great.

Is there a way to define the fields displayed when listing the nodes of that node type? (ie. not the detailed listing of the node page, rather a "teaser" listing of all the nodes of that type). What module would I use for that?

Finally, the big question - are there application types for which drupal is known to be unsuitable?

Thanks.

Comments

rickvug’s picture

rickvug commented

You can make custom node types in Drupal no problem. CCK is the way to go in most cases such as this. It is a bit rough around the edges but is much better than Flexinode. There is also the option of completely custom node types if you want to code everything from scratch.

Is there a way to define the fields displayed when listing the nodes of that node type? (ie. not the detailed listing of the node page, rather a "teaser" listing of all the nodes of that type). What module would I use for that?

You'll want views for this. It works amazingly well when paired with CCK. It's looking to me like Drupal will be a good match, but then again it really depends on the scope of your project and the functionality that you are looking for. Things aren't completely wide open. More specifics about your project could help here in case their are some huge caveats.

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Jacob’s picture

Jacob commented

CCK: http://drupal.org/project/cck
Views: http://drupal.org/project/views
How to create your own simple node type: http://drupal.org/node/40684

Good luck,
Jacob.

davidm’s picture

davidm commented

I asked a similar question a short while ago, and have noted that neither cck nor views are recommended for production sites, and both may have scalability issues compared to a completely custom module (or site altogether).

Keep in mind that using a framework is not all roses (or I guess is like a rose bush :)), in addition to the benefits, you'll have to put up with the limitations, which in Drupal's case includes a constantly moving API (and modules) with scattered documentation.