[TYPO3-dev] Looking for Guidance - Extending Typo3

[James Chambers]

Hi all, new to the community/product but a longtime, seasoned developer.

I'm looking for some direction on where to start (docs, obviously) but would like to know from some vets in this community how they would tackle this project.

First, the scenario I have is that the userbase for T3 here are all volunteers with limited IT experience. There are about 50+ volunteers across 25 communities, and they are transient (meaning, we may not have them for very long)/ We need them to enter content in a specific way (templates, location, order, etc) but want to make it simpler for them. 

Ideally, if Typo3 supported a way for me to push content in via the API, I'd be off to the races. I could create a simple page where they pick a couple of options, type in their message and hit submit, and I'd push the data into Typo3.  But it seems as though what is available is an "internal" API for building extensions, and not an "external" API for creating integrations. Am I missing something? I don't see an official REST API or similar.

What I would like to do via the API:
 - create a page at the correct position in the tree
 - add pre-existing HTML in a text element on the page
 - set meta data (title, background image)

Please let me know if I'm way off track.

Alternatively, if there was a way to consume an RSS feed and use categories/properties of the XML to establish the correct meta data, that would work as well.

Any thoughts/suggestions would be much appreciated, or information on other integrations would be great as well.

Thanks so much for your help!

Cheers.