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Today I am going to show you the new OData support module for Drupal. In case you have not played with it yet, OData is a really cool new format that is available out on the internet from a number of different providers who want to expose their interesting data sets to application developers so they can mash them up in cool and interesting ways.
What I am going to show you today is the Netflix movie catalog and how we can write a very simple query against the OData data source to get results with just a few clicks of the mouse. I will walk through how to download, install, and configure the module in this tutorial.
I will be working from a Drupal instance I have already installed to Windows Azure. If you do not have Drupal setup already take a look at the Deploying Drupal 7 to the cloud using the Windows Azure Companion article posted previously.
First we need to go to github to download the Open Source module which has been released by our friends at MindTree, with funding from Microsoft. We hope in the future to include this module in the Drupal Module Repository.
After navigating to the module page, click on the "odata_support.zip".
Download the zip file by clicking "View Raw", or right clicking the link and choose to save the file. The zip file is a package containing all the module information Drupal needs.
Now let's login to the Drupal Windows Azure install and upload the zip file to install the module. Navigate to the Modules tab and click "Install new module".
Browse for the zip file you just downloaded and click "Install" after you select the correct file. After the upload completes enable the module for use by clicking "Enable newly added modules".
Back on the Modules List page, scroll all the way down to the new section called "ODATA". You will find the "Open Data Protocol (OData)" module listed. Click the ENABLED checkbox and be sure to click "Save configuration".
Now that we have the module enabled let's scroll back down the list to the OData module and click on the new "Configure" link presented there and setup a data source.
What we want to do now is create an endpoint which we will receive data from. The example URL for the Netflix catalog is the URL we will use.
· Sample URL: http://odata.netflix.com/v1/Catalog/
Copy the URL and paste it into the endpoint textbox located above it. We do not need to specify any HTTP Proxy settings, however if you require a proxy you may set it up now. Be sure to scroll down and click "Save" to add the endpoint.
You should now see the endpoint you just added in the "ENABLE ENDPOINTS" list. Let's go take a look at how this works by adding new content. You can use the "Add content" link in the upper left of the page, we will create an Article.
We are going to create an article with a list of action comedy movies using the module to pull data from Netflix. Scroll down the new article page until you get to the ODATA section. Choose the endpoint we are working with, NetflixCatalog. The QUERY BUILDER will help us drill down to the content we wish to show. Click on "Genres"
You should be presented with a list of genres. Since we are
looking for action comedy type films we will be clicking the
"(expand)" located to the right of "Action Comedies". 
We now have a listing of all the data sent from Netflix. Netflix is sending us a lot of data and I do not want to show all the data being received, and it is easy to determine what we get using the "Advanced…" feature.
I am going to add a filter to the OData Query textbox. All of the syntax is available on the OData website. The text for the filter tags on to the end of the string currently in the textbox.
Filter string: ?$select=Name,Synopsis,BoxArt
When you move out of the textbox the module will update the data you are seeing to show only the data that has been selected. NOTE: There are not spaces after the commas (,).
Save the article and when you look at the page you just created you will see the table created by the query we just setup in the OData module.
The data you see on the page is updated in real-time. That means whenever Netflix updates the data your users will instantly see the changes. That is all there is to installing and using the OData modules to create powerful dynamic content on your websites.
I encourage you to head to the OData website to learn about the data feeds available to you and how to publish your own data feed. Using OData you can mix and match data feeds to create a great mash for your application.
