Our first module is going to fetch XML data from Goodreads (http://www.goodreads.com), a free social networking site for avid readers. There, users track the books they are reading and have read, rate books and write reviews, and share their reading lists with friends.
Reading lists at Goodreads are stored in bookshelves. These bookshelves are accessible over a web-based XML/RSS API. We will use that API to display a reading list on the Philosopher Bios website we introduced in Chapter 1.
To integrate the Goodreads information in Drupal, we will create a small module. Since this is our first module, we will get into greater details, since they will be commonplace in the later chapters.
In Drupal, every module is contained in its own directory. This simplifies organization; all of the module's files are located in one place.
To keep naming consistent throughout the module (a standard in Drupal), we will name our directory with the module name. Later, we will...