Re: Drupal/Indicia integration
I was thinking through what I might do for Indicia/Drupal integration following our talks at the NBN conference.
I had to clarify in my mind the distinction between information stored in Drupal and information stored in the Indicia warehouse.
My current thinking goes like this:
Online recording, occurrence-type data is stored in Indicia and we can build Drupal modules which display pages that access the Indicia warehouse. John van Breda has already built a module for data input. I am likely to build one for data verification from photos linked to an occurrence. Another obvious one is for reporting data, such as Records I Have Entered. I am thinking we create modules for forms that show information in a standard structure but which can be themed to alter their appearance. Perhaps they would just consist of one website page per module with controls that use AJAX to update the page with user selections.
Other data such as species accounts, like Stuart Ball demonstrated (more details) to some of us at the Thursday meeting, are stored in Drupal. Where there is a content type being defined and there are going to be many similar pages, perhaps we can create modules for custom CCK fields. One example of this would be an NBN distribution map. Another might be Your Indicia Records For This Species.
I have been wondering if one could create custom fields for CCK for Indicia input so that any shape and size of input form could be configured without programming but this may be wrong thinking to use CCK to construct a form rather a node type. I rather think it is.
Any way, if anyone has a view on the above or is going to start building Drupal modules it would be good to share that information here so that we can work together.
Jim Bacon