Hi,

I'm fairly new to DNN, bit I'm at the stage where I'm creating a custom module. I've followed some tutorials and I'm looking into DataProviders. From what I understand, these DataProviders act as layer between a DNN module and some kind of data storage/persistence - usually a database.

From what I've been reading on the net, it seems that DataProviders are useful for accessing various types of database. Now, for one of my modules, I need a set of data that does not actually reside in a database. Instead, I am making web requests from an external API. In fact, at the moment I am returning hard-coded data with my custom DataProvider - in future I will use the external API.

So, my question is, are DataProviders really supposed to be used for databases? Is it radical that I am using a DataProvder to call into an external API? This doesn't seem to dubious to me, but from reading the web, I see that most developers do, in fact, use them to access a database.

Thanks,
ThreeMarks.