Configuring and Using OSF FieldStorage (Screencast)

Frederick Giasson

This screencast introduces you to another one of the most important OSF for Drupal connector: the OSF FieldStorage module. What this module does is to create a new FieldStorage type for Drupal7. It enables Drupal7 to save the values of its Content Types fields into another storage system than the default one (i.e MySQL in most of the cases).

Because of the way that the Field system has been designed in Drupal7, it is possible to save the values of different fields that compose the same Content Type bundle into different field storage system. For example, if your Content Type bundle is composed of 10 fields, then 4 of them could be saved into MySQL and 6 of them into OSF.

The main purpose of the OSF FieldStorage module is to be able to save Drupal local Content Type information into OSF. What that means is that all your Drupal7 local content then become accessible, manageable and manipulatable using the 27 Open Semantic Framework (OSF) web services endpoints. Your local Drupal content can then be shared with other Drupal instances that could use OSF for Drupal to connect to that same OSF instance and seamlessly republish/re-purpose that local content from the other Drupal portal.

Here is the documentation of the architecture of this connector module.

This is the power of the OSF FieldStorage connector module. It supports the following Drupal features:

  1. Full FieldStorage API
  2. Entities caching
  3. Revisioning
  4. SearchAPI
  5. 29 field widgets
  6. Export feature in 6 formats

In this screencast, you will be introduced to Drupal7’s Field system. Then you will see how the OSF FieldStorage module creates a new FieldStorage type for Drupal7 and how it can be used. Then you will see how to configure the OSF FieldStorage module: to creating new Content Type fields that uses this osf_fieldstorage type, how to map these fields to RDF, how to use one of the 29 supported field widgets, etc.

Finally, you will see how you can synchronize existing Content Type pages (that was created before OSF for Drupal was installed on your Drupal instance) into a OSF instance.

 


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Configuring and Using OSF Entities (Screencast)

Frederick Giasson

This screencast introduces you to one of the most important OSF for Drupal connector: the OSF Entities module. This module creates a new Entity Type called Resource. The description of these entities is managed directly into the Open Semantic Framework (OSF). All the calls to the core entity API function like: entity_load(), entity_save(), entity_create() and entity_delete() are operated with different calls to different OSF web service endpoints.

What this means for a Drupal developer is that they can use Drupal’s Entity API to manage instance records that are hosted remotely in a OSF instance. They don’t have to know how OSF works in order to take advantage of it. They just have to use the API they are used to use. This new Entity Type supports the following Drupal features:

  1. Full Entity API
  2. Entities caching
  3. Revisioning
  4. SearchAPI
  5. Templates selection with inference on their type
  6. 29 field widgets
  7. Export feature in 6 formats

The screencast introduces you to the following aspects of the OSF Entities module:

  1. Introduction to the architecture of the OSF Entities module
  2. Exposing the available entities in OSF into Drupal Bundles and Fields
  3. Browsing and searching for Resource entities
  4. Managing Resource Type bundles
  5. Introduction to the OSF Entity Reference field widget
  6. Creating and updating Resource entities

 


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Managing Datasets in OSF for Drupal (Screencast)

Frederick Giasson

In this new screencast, I first introduce the concept of a dataset: what it is, what it is used for and how it works. I will also outline the characteristics of datasets in the Open Semantic Framework (OSF) such as having a set of permissions for group of users, a unique identifier, etc.

Then I explain how datasets are being used by OSF for Drupal, and how they can be managed using a Drupal portal: how to import, create, register, change permissions to datasets. Then I explain how datasets can become searchable using the SearchAPI or be disabled in the web portal.

Finally I cover the OSF Entities administrators search and browse utility which can be used by Drupal administrators to browse and search for all entities that are accessible to the Drupal portal: even the ones that are indexed in datasets that are not yet registered to the portal.

 

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Registering an OSF Network in OSF for Drupal (Screencast)

Frederick Giasson

In this screencast, I explain how we can link (register) one or multiple OSF Web Services networks to a single OSF for Drupal instance. I discuss how this OSF Web Services mechanism can be used to bring datasets from multiple different OSF instances into the same Drupal portal. I also cover how we can use the same OSF Web Services network as the backend for multiple Drupal portals (which uses OSF for Drupal).

We briefly discuss the distributed aspect of the Open Semantic Framework (OSF), but this topic will be discussed more in deep in a subsequent screencast.

 

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Installing OSF for Drupal using the OSF Installer (Screencast)

Frederick Giasson

The Open Semantic Framework (OSF) for Drupal is a middleware layer that allows structured data (RDF) and associated vocabularies (ontologies) to “drive” tailored tools and data displays within Drupal. The basic OSF for Drupal modules provide two types of capabilities. First, there are a series of connector modules such as OSF Entities, OSF SearchAPI and OSF Field Storage to integrate an OSF instance into Drupal’s core APIs. Second, there is a series of module tools used to administer all of these capabilities.

By using OSF for Drupal, you may create, read, update and delete any kind of content in a OSF instance. You may also search, browse, import and export structured datasets from an OSF instance.

OSF for Drupal connects to the underlying structured (RDF) data via the separately available open-source OSF Web Services. OSF Web Services is a mostly RESTful Web services layer that allows standalone or multiple Drupal installations to share and collaborate structured data with one another via user access rights and privileges to registered datasets. Collaboration networks may be established directly to distributed OSF Web Services servers, also allowing non-Drupal installations to participate in the network.

OSF for Drupal can also act as a linked data platform. With Drupal’s other emerging RDF capabilities, content generated by Drupal can be ingested by the OSF Web Services and managed via the OSF for Drupal tools, including the publication and exposure on the Web of linked data with query and Web service endpoints.

OSF for Drupal has dependencies on OSF Web Services, which means an operational OSF for Drupal website only requires access to a fully operational OSF instance.

For instance, you can check the Installing Core OSF (Open Semantic Framework) screencast to see how you can deploy your own OSF Web Services instance.

Installing OSF for Drupal using the OSF Installer

In this screencast, we will cover how to install OSF for Drupal using the OSF Installer command line tool.

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