CMSB API?

4 posts by 2 authors in: Forums > CMS Builder
Last Post: May 2, 2013   (RSS)

By Dave - April 25, 2013

Hi Javed, 

API's are usually to access the underlying system functions or data.  To get at the data you can just access MySQL directly, and to add or modify functionality of the CMS you can see the list of plugin hooks under: Admin > Plugins > "Plugin Developers! Click here for a list of plugin hooks" (at the bottom).  

Was there something in particular you were wanting to do?

Thanks.

Dave Edis - Senior Developer
interactivetools.com

By illumemagazine - April 30, 2013

Dave,

We're thinking of having a hackathon to get some solid coders to build storytelling tools for ILLUME, using CMSB as platform. So I wanted to figure out the best approach. Do we add to our wish list the desire to have an API for CMSB, hoping someone takes that on as a challenge? What other ways would we be able to get coders to build plugins or add-ons without directly accessing our DB?

Thanks

By Dave - May 2, 2013

Hi Javed, 

The challenge is that if coders can run PHP code on your server at all then they could get complete access.  So you could have an API that allowed coders to remotely submit articles, but they'd have to run the app on another server.   It's likely that you wouldn't know what you needed in the API until after the coders can up with the ideas.

Maybe another approach would be to have the hackathon be about conceptualizing the storytelling tools and designing the UI, with the best apps getting the programming done?  Then you could open it up to designers or front-end programmers.  Or if it was concept base, anyone could participate, even with just explained ideas or pencil sketches, which would open it up to a lot more people.

Or if you wanted to allow programmers full access, you could give them a MySQL dump of your article content so they could write tools on their own machines.

Hope that helps.  Let me know any questions.

Dave Edis - Senior Developer
interactivetools.com