Article

Drupal 7 does not have built-in support for representational state transfer (REST) functionality. However, the RESTful Web Services module is arguably the most efficient way to provide resource representations for all the entity types, by leveraging Drupal's powerful Entity API. Unmodified, the module makes it possible to output the instances of the core entity types – node, file, and user – in JSON or XML format. Further entity type resources and formats are possible utilizing hooks in added code.

As with any REST solution, the RESTful Web Services module supports all four of the fundamental operations of data manipulation: create, read, update, and delete (CRUD). The corresponding RESTful API HTTP methods are POST, GET, PUT, and DELETE, respectively.

Anyone hoping to learn and make use of this module – especially for the first time – will likely be frustrated by the current project documentation, which is incomplete, uneven, and lacking clear examples. This article – a brief overview – is intended to introduce what is possible with this module, and help anyone getting started with it.

We begin with a clean Drupal 7 installation (using the Standard profile) running on a virtual host with the domain name "drupal_7_test". After installing and enabling the module, we find that it does not have the configuration user interface one might expect. In the demonstration code below, we focus on the node entity type.

Nabbing a Node

The simplest operation – reading an entity instance – is performed using a simple GET request containing the machine name of the entity type and the entity's ID.