Meetup.com integration module - help shape it - round 1

OK, here's the spec I drew up. This is for a sort of pilot project on a local community site. Either that project or this discussion will most likely be the birthplace of the Meetup.com module :)

Using the Meetup API module, pull in information from Meetup.com about upcoming Meetups.

v1 goal: On [snip], show "Events from Meetup.com" under [snip] Links to the events will go to Meetup.com.

More tweaks will probably follow shortly after, but this will give people something to look at and provide a base for suggesting improvements.

[snip] It's actually probably the most feasible implementation - a module that provides fields to be used in custom views - then people can make their own blocks and display Meetup.com data however they like. This would actually be useful.

Things to think about:

* caching - how long, or leave it up to the user, or to views, etc.? performance in general
* query/option validation to avoid unnecessary API limit usage
* [snip] needing its own API key eventually - will talk to Meetup dev support, they know me
* operation under error conditions, e.g. limit reached, API not responding, etc. (v1-ish goal will be to use previously retrieved information and bail before any new (or rather, no real) data is returned.

[snip]

Hmm, in re-reading this I realize that there is more to think about...do I really want to go with the straight Views approach, where I would probably have to make "Meetup Event" a first-class object...or should I make it a node module to start, perhaps ones that pulls in events according to some configuration settings on cron? Then I would only need to implement that node's fields in Views...which might be just as involved.

This calls for a bit of research, so I'm going to see if there are any other event APIs (maybe in http://drupal.org/project/fb) and how they choose to implement user-consumable functionality, if they do. Otherwise...maybe I'll wind up charting new-ish ground. I've never dealt with Views enhancements that actually resulted in API calls...generally Views are for dealing with data that already exists. So then it seems as if I would need a DB table and an implementation of hook_cron, at least. Perhaps a simple DB table (or several) though (rather than a node module) and Views integration will be the best place to start...yeah, I think that's what I'll do. I might be able to piggyback off the Data module to manage the table...will have to check it to see if it's meant to be used with contributed modules. The Meetup module really will be pulling "data" so it could be an interesting dependency there. Only concern is if Data will make it to D7 or not and what kind of rewrite that might entail...but I don't really care yet. Once this is out there, I'm sure it'll get feedback that'll help with (re)design decisions.

And here is the link to the roadmap-in-progress.

@Jurjen de Vries: Great, thanks for contributing an example of how this could be used once developed.

I have been trying to coordinate an installation profile to provide some of this functionality as well, so really there's many ways it could happen, but it probably won't till I have time (not soon...) or someone has the need and just does it or gets it done.

Let me know what you think.

All sounds very interesting. Has there been much progress since?

I've previously pulled Meetup events into Drupal using Feeds, but it would be great if people could RSVP without having to redirect them to Meetup.com.