Can the functionality of this module be provided by third party modules?

[bradfordcondon]

Now that I'm understanding the scope of this module, I view its role as this:

• Provide forms for users to create organisms and analyses for chado
• provide admin interface for admin to approve these

Drupal is pretty much designed for this sort of thing, so I want to at least consider the possibility of using a generic solution. For example: https://www.drupal.org/project/workbench

Heres what we would do:

• Content submitters create accounts (or we allow anonymous submissions if thats possible). They then fill out the standard form to create Chado content. Tripal 3 content submission is pretty customizable by attaching fields, so I think we could recreate the existing form with some work.
• the content they create doesn't get published, but goes to the admin role to be approved. When they approve, it gets published.

It's possible this isn't feasible, but if it is it will be a much simpler solution than providing custom forms and admin areas. Plus you no longer have to custom-create forms for every type of content you want to support down the road.

[mpoelchau]

That sounds like a great idea - still needs discussion, but definitely worth discussing.

[childers]

I love the idea of making use of existing modules if they are actively maintained. I agree with @mpoelchau this is certainly worth discussing more.

[bradfordcondon]

glad to hear you all are interested. After doing some investigation, the move away from nodes to Tripal's own content type in Tripal 3 would mean some work adapting a module like workbench. On the other hand the benefits of providing a solution that works for all chado content with minimal setup is very appealing (provided that tools like workbench do a good job of hiding the Drupalness from end users). And i'd agree im very wary of adopting modules that wont be maintained- the nice thing about Drupal 8 is we can see if devs a) keep support for 7 and b) have made progress on 8 (both of which are true here)

I won't let the possibility of going down this road stop me from overhauling this module.