Announcing Drupad 1.9
Drupad 1.9 will be available in the AppStore very very soon (around July, the fifth). You will need to update the companion module which will be available at the same time on Drupal.org.
New feature
As of Drupad 1.9, you can create content with your iPhone.
- create content
- edit content
- post images
- CCK and Fields API support
I’m not saying that you’ll be able to create any kind of node. But now — while on the go — you can write a blog post, an article, a mood message, post a picture, etc.
Long version
A little more than a year ago Drupad 1.0 hit the AppStore.
I decided to create a Drupal client for the iPhone because I was still surprised to see that there wasn’t one. The reason why there were no such client was pretty simple I think. A client app means ability to create content. Wordpress allows to create content, Tumblr allows to create content, in fact, any client app of any content publishing system available on the AppStore let users create content.
But Drupal isn’t as simple as other publishing platform because it allows users to define custom content types. Hence we have no idea what those content types are made of. Thanks to CCK and now Fields API, Drupal content types are all but predictable. So my guess was it’s impossible! I think I was right, since I saw several attempts, delivering iOS apps for Drupal allowing one to post content, but only made of a title and a body. In my opinion, this was not the right answer.
Why did I choose to create Drupad anyway?
Their was still useful tasks that we could make easier to achieve from a phone. And those are the one you currently use with Drupad.
But even good feedbacks still ask for content creation.
How can we create content?
What I’ve been working on the past several months is porting Form API’s theme layer to iOS.
Working with Drupal’s Form API is the right path, because it’s about data ; data that describes form structure. And more than this, it’s about predictable data, mostly. I mean, once I have implemented Form API textfield in iOS, I know how to deal with Title field, Author field, Menu link title field, etc., and this in any content type.
In fact, the hard part wasn’t so much forms retrieval nor forms submission. The hard part was designing a mechanism that generates a specific user interface based on a form definition.
What to expect?
As Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn) said:
If you’re not ashamed of your product when you launch it, you launched too late.
There are thousands of things I’m dying to fix, improve and implement — but I had to stop and make a first release.
Here are the 2 steps I’m following:
- make it work
- make it smart
We are in step 1. For example, you won’t see autocompletes for now. I disabled them just before submitting the App to Apple, because the implementation I made wasn’t usable enough (UX), I’m working on it.
What is supported?
As of Drupad 1.9 you can:
- node/add/
content_type - node/
nid/edit
This is important to keep it in mind.
This means you won’t be able to edit nodes properties which are editable from a secondary local tab - Übercart products attributes or Webform settings for example.
Please also note that there is no CSS nor JavaScript in Drupad iOS context, so some forms could lost features, or look weird in regards of what you are used to in your favorite browser.
The permission system is fully respected. Fields that a user shouldn’t see aren’t generated. Nodes that a user can’t edit won’t be editable by this user.
Almost all (Drupal 6 & 7 standard) form components are supported. But before releasing a first version I really wanted to give users the ability to upload photos. This is why file_field and image_field are supported.
Drupad wants to hear from you!
Lots of fields (CCK/Fields API speaking) are missing. Based on your feedback those will come.
Please give us your feedback on Uservoice.
And if you find bugs, report them on the d.o issue queue.