I dream of a day when Drupal can create views, leverage the Form API, and implement templates for data from external services just like it can for data located in its own database. Is it too good to be true? Not at all! With just a bit (maybe a lot) of upfront work and some clever coding, external data objects can behave like native entities in Drupal.

Session Outline

This session will detail how we have leveraged Remote Entities and the Entity API for our project in order to provide a standard mechanism for loading, creating and saving external data objects from REST APIs. In addition, we will discuss how and why we disabled the Remote Entity API module's default behavior of saving a local copy due to the immense volume of data in our external services.

Topics will include:

When it makes sense to use remote entities
The pros and cons of this approach
Defining custom remote entities for each endpoint
Leveraging entity properties to standardize data
Writing a custom query class to convert EntityFieldQueries into remote queries
Examples of automatic views integration
By the end of the session, all attendees should have a working understanding of how they could use remote entities as a method for standarding their external services integrations.

Related Modules

Remote Entity API - https://www.drupal.org/project/remote_entity
Entity API - https://www.drupal.org/project/entity
EntityFieldQuery Views Backend - https://www.drupal.org/project/efq_views