Simplify Integration Guide

[ProLoser]

The current document is far too detailed and long and will reduce the likeliness of people adopting Copula.

We should probably break it up into two separate documents:

• A quick-start guide that is as short and minimal as possible and only covers the basics you need to get started
• Docs that expand concepts in further detail that were only touched upon in the quick-start guide

[davidyell]

I would also suggest a better explanation of what the plugin does. Currently my understanding is that the main plugin is actually just a library, and you have to develop your own plugin which implements it in order to use it's functionality. This doesn't seem clear from the readme.

I would also put some selling points in as to why using Copula is better than just doing a file_get_contents() from the Facebook json api for example, as currently, I see all this stuff and it looks overkill for pretty much any remote connection.

[ProLoser]

Well I don't think the guys have taken the time to convert all the existing plugins over to Copula, so although yes it is a lib to enable you to develop more plugins, there are already quite a few that are ready for use.

@davidyell I think if you're using file_get_contents() for API integration you're doing it wrong...

@tenebrousedge what's the status? Are you guys no longer working on this? Cuz not having a few plugins ready-to-go or the simplified plugin use seems to only completely stop all adoption I might have previously had.

[davidyell]

My use case was using this to connect to my own API, rather than one of the large providers. Is this plugin only suitable for connecting to establish api's then?

[ProLoser]

The use-case is connecting to any decently RESTful API. The amount of 'establishment' behind the api is inconsequential. It allows you to unify your code so that you have 1 uniform internal API across all external APIs, rather than having to import and learn a new lib/api for each and every provider.

What might have previously been a matter of:

$twitterProvider = new TwitterApi('authuser', 'authpass');
$users = $twitterProvider.getFollowers('someUser');
// and
Github::user = 'authUser';
Github::pass = 'authPass';
Github::connect();
$users = Github::UserService()->list();

Can be standardized into something like this:

$twitterDbConfig = array(
  'Datasource' => 'Copula.Twitter',
  'login' => 'authUser',
  'password' => 'authPass'
);
...
$users = $this->Twitter->get('users', array('following' => 'someUser'));
// and
$githubDbConfig = array(
  'Datasource' => 'Copula.Github',
  'login' => 'authUser',
  'password' => 'authPass'
);
...
$users = $this->Github->get('users', array('following' => 'someRepo'));