Building a REST API For Your Drupal Site

The documentation is pretty awful, consisting of a few handbook pages on Drupal.org and exhortations to "figure out what a REST server does and you'll understand how to build one". The combination of Services and REST Server get you part way, but a step-by-step process in how to build a module would be useful.

What version of the module to target? 2.x is fairly stable, with work underway on a 3.x branch.

Which version of Drupal to target? 7.x almost ready, 6.x well-established.

    • What is a REST API?

      • explanation

      • benefits

        • allows people, including you, to build applications on top of your website's data

      • costs

    • Services Module

      • what it does

      • how it works

      • authenticating

        • API Keys

        • OAuth

        • etc.

    • REST Server module

      • GET vs. POST

      • Write a custom parser

      • Build a resource module to handle GET requests with parameters coming through a URL