Top 10 Drupal modules for moving data

Morgan Strong's blog | Created 1 decade ago

We’ve been doing a lot of work creating some interesting application with our collection data and presenting them online. Most of the work is currently under development, but there will be a public interface in the not-too-distant future (keep following this blog for more details).

But at this junction, I thought it would be appropriate to share our 10 favourite Drupal modules that we’ve been using to import and manipulate large streams of data records.

So here they are (in no particular order):

• Migrate (http://drupal.org/project/migrate) - a huge favourite for us, and in our opinion the best way to move data from one source to another in Drupal.
• Feeds (http://drupal.org/project/feeds) - though not as preferred as Migrate, it has its place and we use it, particularly with image porting.
• OpenLayers (http://drupal.org/project/openlayers) + Mapbox Maps (http://drupal.org/project/mapbox) for fantastic customisable maps that can work behind a login, and handle the huge data streams that we are throwing at it, which leads us to:
• Geofield (http://drupal.org/project/geofield), with the quantities of data we have, you really need this one.
• Rules (http://drupal.org/project/rules) for good management and project implementation.
• Drush (http://drupal.org/project/drush) for system management on large sites.
• Flag (http://drupal.org/project/flag) this exciting module has all kinds of possibilities for comparing and shortlisting similar data.

Now for the next three, I’m not going to explicitly list Views (http://drupal.org/project/views) as one of my ten dot points, as this is pretty much a standard, but these three are built on top of views to give us the results we’ve been looking for:

• Views data export (http://drupal.org/project/views_data_export) for exporting data once a user has drilled down to what they are looking for.
• Views bulk operations (http://drupal.org/project/views_bulk_operations) for ease of maintenance.
• Views hacks (http://drupal.org/project/views_hacks) for when we just need to change views behaviour enough to perform the functions we require.

Hope you like the list, and if there’s some big data Drupal modules you love, please drop a comment below.