Drupal and mobile - integration across multiple applications

Question

I have Drupal installed to Amazon EC. I was wondering is it possible to make another database so that mobile users can upload pictures with location there and users from the Drupal website can see these pictures? What would I need to do?

Answer 1

You need something like next, right?

• User upload image from mobile application
• User can see it in site

If it's right - it's not need new database, all can be maked with one. As one method - you can create special node type and one of next things:

• Create custom module, that create new nodes (in my opinion - it's better)
• Submit node creation form from application

Answer 2

I am not sure if you are approaching this from the right angle.

First, to answer the question you're asking: Yes, it is trivial to make Drupal show data hosted elsewehere. Just link to it using the URL, (with some secret key that is authentcated on the receiving end if the data shall not be exposed outside of Drupal's access control). A custom module with about 15 lines of PHP should do this bare bones with pictures. You shall of course need some extra code to handle transfer of other data types (location, title, byline, license, access level, etc.) However, I am not sure this is the best solution.

Here is my suggestion for an alternative approach:

The Drupal login dialogue is not the only way a user can authenticate with Drupal. For instance, if you want to use a native app to interact with Drupal, you may use the deviceID for authentication, or the user may register the app once. To do this, you just need to let the programmer write a custom authentication module for your Drupal site, to exchange authentication credentials with the mobile app. It is not hard to make this authentication handshake (between the app and Drupal) invisible to the user.

Or, if the user is using a browser on their smartphone, he/she may authenticate by logging in on the site using Drupal's standard login dialogue before uploading the image using Drupal's build-in file upload.

Whether you implement the client end as a native app, or you just use the smartphone's browser, interacting with Drupal directly instead of interacting by means of a secondary DB seems to me like a better approach.