Drupal’s Services Module makes Integration of External Applications Easier
Apart from having an intuitive and user-friendly UI, Drupal also serves as a front-end for various technologies, frameworks and APIs. Many technologies as well as web services can be integrated with Drupal. Services module is one of the easiest ways through which external applications and web services is integrated with Drupal. The module provides a standardized API method of integrating external web services and internal web server modules with the Drupal site. Services module is very popular and works with various formats like REST, XML-RPC, JSON, SOAP and many more. It provides the following benefits to the Drupal developers:
- Services module is helpful to Flash/Flex developers, wanting to integrate their Drupal site with their Flash applications.
- JavaScript developers are also benefitted through Services module by using the JSON backend server module integration.
- It allows other Drupal modules to consume Drupal content and integrate with external applications.
- Services module allows mobile developers to integrate Drupal with an Android or iPhone application.
- It makes your Drupal site and server act as a web service to provide services through the REST and SOAP protocols.
- The module also provides authentication mechanisms, allowing for integration with your Drupal user base and permissions.
- The module enables migrating data created in other languages into Drupal site.
- The Services module allows developers to enable custom-built content servers and services on the Drupal website from the module’s back-end configuration and administration area.
- It integrates with core Drupal including Drupal files, nodes, taxonomy, users, and the Views and system Modules
- Services module make it possible to fetch content from your Drupal website and display it on another Drupal site, either on the same local server or from an external location.
- The key benefit of this module is that it allows web service integration with multiple applications while using the standard Drupal module code and programming.
- Services module helps in reducing the time spent in developing your own web service modules, as it offers a standard interface for numerous common web service applications environments.
- It provides a testing environment, allowing easy management of API keys.
