Drupalcon Denver 2012 - store your data with entities

2012dcdenver-entitiesfago.txt

Drupal 7 
- example bundles 
    - node type
    - vocabulary 

What are entities 
- drupal commerce entity / product display
- organic groups
- profile2

What is the entity api used for?
- unified way to access data
- every type of grouping of data is an entity:
  - profile
  - product
  - rules
  - entity reference
  - groups
  - vote
  - search 

Interacting with entities
- in core there are api functions 
  - entity_get_info()
  - entity_load()

Entity api module
- System takes care of language that it provides
- entity allows you to save values

property info 
- enables you to validate data

Modules currently using entities
- entities views creates views output instead of sql query from views

creating an entity type
- create entity with hook_entitity_info()
- specify your controller class
- implement hook_schema

Example - Profile2 module

Entity exportable
- entity api allows exportable much like ctools
- export into code
- entities are automatically exportable just define different controller

Integrating exportable entity
- property info generated 
- features takes in info and crud controller

Example module - Profile2
- best makes use of most of entities features
- adding a new profile type 

Entities allows different types of storage
- entities decouples and allows implementations of database storage
- nosql, doctrine, phpcr
- remote entities - a good way to integrate data remote server (e.g. contrib module, restWS)

how does it integrate with the field api
- feeds create and stored in local databaseb
- if you just want to implement remote data

no-db entities
- still allow for integration of contrib modules

Advantages
- entity cache allows entity storage and caching with memcache

Example - google picasa entitites
- http://drupal.org/sandbox/fago/1493180

Room for improvement
- efq (entity field query) views
- read only mode

Drupal 8 entity api
- use with class entity object
- easily get entity type
- full storage controller in core
- comments moved to comments (see below)

comments example
- create entity 
- then use all other methods: save, id, delete, delete multiple
- create and extend entityDatabaseStorageController
- every entity has to have EntityInterface