Islandora Entity Bridge provides a simple connector between Islandora/Fedora Entities and Drupal. It is to allow for referencing Islandora Objects (like in Flag, Entity Queue, Entityreference, etc) without bringing in the full weight of an Entity like Node.
For true syncing of content to bring over from Fedora into Drupal (as nodes), see the Islandora Sync(https://github.com/islandora/islandora_sync) module.
Islandora
Entity
Download and enable module.
Right now, all types of Fedora Objects are brought over. This brings in their pid, label, content model, status to start.
Display configuration is currently a work in progress as I try to figure out a way to use the field display UI without the Islandora Entity Bridge necessarily having fields. As such the current display configuration is unreliable. However, there is views integration with three different field handlers: datastream link, image display of datastreams, and datastream xpath.
The xpath datastream field handler requires a full xpath (with the namespaces). This needs to be worked out so it is hopefully as simple as with Islandora Sync.
Use the issue queue!
Why the alternative?
First, we need to get the history lesson on why both these modules exist. Directly using Islandora Entities with other Drupal modules is not possible. In Drupal, entities are defined as having Integer IDs. Since fedora records do not necessarily have numeric PIDs, a large chunk of the drupal ecosystem (Flag, Entityreference, Entityqueue, Views to name a few) are not directly accessible. A chunk of the blame falls on Drupal Core for the restriction. But that is a long process and requires changing core and various contributed modules.
Hence the excellent Islandora Sync module was created thanks to DGI and UCLA.
Currently, Islandora Sync feeds various pieces of data from all objects of a content model into Drupal. This means that fields (namely, object assets) get duplicated. And if you are dealing with a DAMS with hundreds of thousands of objects, Drupal performance can become somewhat hard to manage (especially if using the database field storage for nodes).
The (initial) goal of Islandora Entity Bridge is to provide a few key columns of data (from the Fedora Model: pid, label, content model, status) to Drupal. These get mapped to an Integer ID which allows for interfacing with various other "Drupal" modules like Flag, Entityreference, Entityqueue, etc. Everything else remains in (and gets referenced from) Fedora via Islandora APIs. While all hundreds of thousands of records will get synced, the dataset/index would still remain small enough to not be a large burden on Drupal (and there is no duplication of the data in the datastreams).
With that said, Islandora Sync offers less end-configuration (while the integration is starting to get in place, views are much easier to work with, for once.). Theming in IEB is nowhere near ready (and really needs to be thought out) while Islandora Sync is quite magical on that front.
TLDR: both modules have their places :)
Cherry Hill