Creating Database

Question

I want to create a student database in a Drupal website. There will be a page containing a form (name, id, age, phone)in the website, where data will be entered and stored. Later on the stored student list can be retrieved or perform some operations on the database like sending sms to all the students.

Please note that students are not the site users, some other user will enter all the details of the students.

I am a newbie to Drupal.. Please guide me on how to do that...

Thanks

Answer 1

If you are requiring a front end to view the data stored I would highly recommend bui[lding a bunch of custom views. You can then go further and install Views Bulk Operations to allow actions to be performed on multiple rows (students). You have send mail as a default option but for sending a sms you will need to install the sms framework

As for the containers, Drupal 7 has fields which can be attached to user profiles, if they get pretty advanced you can use the Profile2 module which just gives you a little more control.

If you dont need the attachment to an actual user account you can create a content type "student" which will allow you to add custom fields in the same way you can with a profile.

Answer 2

Make a content type for student. And using CCK add all the field i.e. name, age,etc.. For phone, CCK phone module will be helpful to you..

Answer 3

I think you should be using the default Drupal registration form, make the student entries users, even though you don't want them to sign in or anything like that. Put up some profile fields (I think this is the new Profile followup for D7, Profile 2) in which you could store some additional information and let them be filled on the registration form. Then afterward you could even export the users to CSV (Profile CSV). This way you could have some more flexible data to be used to for example SMS them.

Please make sure you configure a good default "Authenticated user" role, this role should not be assigned to any administrative functions. Or even better, create a new role "student" and be sure to assign the role to those new entries.

Using users is (I think) the right way to go, since you can afterwards (for unforeseen future proposes) even let the users login and share content which only students should be obliged to.