By walterbyrd on

I know this an almost un-answerable question.

Would it be much more difficult to develop a drupal module, as opposed to a free standing php application?

For example, I would like to create a fairly simple contact management app. It would be a contacts table (address book), related to a history table. I would be able to look at a history of contacts for a particular contact entry, or a history for the all the contacts.

Another idea I had was IT assett management. A software table related to a hardware table related to a systems table.

As far as I know, flexinode does not have any sort of relational capibility, so I would have to develop the apps in php, then adapt them to work with drupal. Would that be especially difficult?

⋅ Categories: Drupal 4.7.x

Comments

Mirrorball’s picture

Mirrorball commented

Developing a drupal module is much easier than a free standing app. Drupal has lots of handy functions and does a lot of things for you.

patrickharris’s picture

patrickharris commented

It takes quite a while to get to know Drupal. Once that time is invested, it's a great platform to develop with.

gateone’s picture

gateone commented

Hi, actually this is an easy question to answer: it is definitively easier to program a Drupal module instead of a stand alone php application:

Drupal has an API - this means, you do not have to program fundamental stuff again and again every time you add some functionality:

a) you do not need to worry about user registration, management and authentication which you might need to program from scratch
b) you do not need to worry about session management
c) ... (this list actually is almost endless to be continued)

On the bottom line: with Drupal you get an entire web application framework and will only need to concentrate on the pure functionality of your module!

You might be interested in a Drupal module called Module Builder. This is a phantastic module that asks you a couple of questions about the future module you like to program and then spit out a sceleton of a module that has everything right in place and which only needs to be filled with your actual module.

You might also want to read through the Module Developer's Guide in Drupal.org's Handbook section.

For the things you want to do, maybe you might want to really screen all already available modules on the module download page. It could well be that you already find what you are trying to do, or you can use an already existing module and enhance it with your options!

At last, please read and take to your heart the content of this great article on how to - or rather how to NOT make Drupal development a road to hell ;-)

Good luck, Steve