Linking to files inside Drupal

Question

I've been asked to create an intranet at work and thought I'd look at Drupal to get this done. What they want to have is a few blogs, a calendar, a forum as well as a link to all of the documentation that staff are required to be able to access to do their jobs, such as a phone list (in .xls format) and a ton of .pdf files that contain policies and procedures.

I have D7 installed on a 2008R2 server, the same server that contains all of the data. This server doesn't face the internet, so security doesn't have to be too deep.

Anyway, how would I create my site in Drupal so that I can point to the directories on the file server (which everyone can access to read)? I'm ok with a directory listing, it doesn't have to be fancy.

I had explored creating a directory inside of my site then having the files sync between the data drive and the www data store. I looked into having the site tie into our AD infrastructure but it's going to be setup so only a few can add to it and everyone else can read. The forums will be for certain staff (5 or so) to be able to bat around ideas.

Answer 1

I'm not sure what kind of answer you are looking for ...

If you just want these files stored remotely, but accessible from drupal you may want to look at these modules:

• Filedepot
• MediaMover
• Migrate

I actually have a similar criteria on a site. Serve pdf file listings from a non-drupal directory to allowed users -- essentially a simple directory listing. Here is how I did it in D7 with a bit of custom coding.

1. I make a symlink from a remote filesystem into like DRUPAL_SITE_DIR/sites/default/files/REMOTE_MOUNTPOINT
2. Make a custom module that uses something to scan for files and show them to the enduser. You can use D7 file_scan_directory if you like, I actually opted for Symfony's Finder Component. The advantage to Symfony's finder is things like "show files of X size", "sort by something" or doing more complex search filters (which I will need) or truely different types of remote files (FTP, S3, etc). Example code for a module poorly named "views_fs" can be found in this public Gist.

Hope this info helps.