More about my master thesis about Drupal, Rules & the Web....
Introducing blog post: link.
Abstract:
For the popular open source Content Management System (CMS) Drupal the Rules
extension module makes it feasible for users to configure reactions on a high level
without requiring any programming expertise. To achieve that, the extension allows
for the specification of reactive rules - or more precisely it leverages Event-Condition-
Action rules, for which the actions are executed when a specified event occurs and
the conditions are met. Finally the ability to create custom reactions constitutes an
opportunity for users to rapidly adapt the behavior of Drupal based web applications.
In this thesis the existing Rules extension module is analyzed and revised in order
to obtain an extensible and reusable solution, for which all identified flaws have been
eliminated. Moreover the module is advanced to work across system boundaries,
such that it can be utilized for the rule-based invocation of web services as well as
for reacting on remotely occurring events. Therefore the solution obtains the ability
to work with arbitrary data structures with the help of metadata, so that the data of
remote systems can be seamlessly integrated based on metadata. Building upon this
capability we present the rule-based utilization of RESTful and WS* web services and
introduce Rules web hooks - a novel approach for the interaction of Drupal based
web applications that exploits reaction rules to enable custom near-instant reactions
on remotely occurring events.
Resources:
* Drupal,
* the Rules module, as well as the foundational Entity API.
* The Rules web prototype (including Rules web hooks and "Remote sites")
* Rest and SOAP support for the Rules remote sites module.
Updates:
Fortunately in the meanwhile klausi started a follow-up thesis, in which my foundational work is being further improved. Resulting from our work, check out the
* Web service client module.
* Rules web hooks module.
The full thesis:
You can find the full text online at the libary or attached to this page.