Review: Drupal Web Services by Trevor James
Review: Drupal Web Services by Trevor James
Josh Waihi
February 09, 2011
Reading the table of contents alone on this book got me excited. It looked like an how-to of every FAQ surrounding web services and social networking integration with Drupal.
Reading in the first chapter, this book comes across in full description and easy to understand. The concept of web services and how they work could be confusing to communicate to someone who doesn't understand XML or the HTTP protocol but Trevor James has done a good job in taking the time to explain how web services work including some real examples of how Drupal uses and provides web services.
Any reader should be advised that this book is a reference guide rather than a book for cover to cover reading. I thought chapter following the introdction in to web services was a bit like being thrown into the deep end. If I was looking on how to configure the fedEx web service module, I may not want to have to analyse SOAP protocol to be able to do that and in some regards, this book may come across as Drupal is harder to implement than it really is.
It is for this reason that I would recommend this book for medium to advanceed Drupal developers and for end users. If you're the kind of person who knows very little PHP but runs a personal Drupal install on your XAMP or dreamhost account you may find this book a little overwhelming.
Overall, I'm glad to have been given the chance to review this book. As a developer, it has given me some good approaches on how to handle certain requirements with Drupal web services - a book I would recommend as a communial reference for any Drupal dev house.