In this session, we will refresh your knowledge of the core entities in Drupal 7 (user, node, comment, taxonomy term, taxonomy vocabulary, file), and provide examples of API calls to define and query core and custom entities. We will also touch on useful contributed modules to work with and extend entities, for example the Entity API, Entity Reference, Entity Translation, and RESTful Web Services modules.

With entities and fields in core, Drupal 7 has come a long way towards a full-blown modeling framework from its humble beginnings as a piece of hard-wired community software. Unfortunately, compared to information modeling languages like EXPRESS or current architectural patterns like ActiveRecord, Drupal has chosen its own vocabulary with content types, entities and bundles. This makes it hard even for seasoned information modelers when working on their model using the mechanisms Drupal 7 provides.