AgileAdam.com

Development

Testing Tokens with Entity Ref Traversal via Drush

/ December 3, 2019
I am working on a project that has some complicated depth. I needed a way to quickly test token replacement. It’s pretty simple when you understand a few things.

Example Architecture

Here’s the Drupal architecture for this example:
- Discussion Group (content type)
  
  Title
  
  Intro
  
  Body
  
  “Associated Experts” paragraph field (allows one “Associated Experts” paragraph item)
- Associated Experts (paragraph type, used by many content types like Discussion Group above)
  
  Heading
  
  Intro
  
  Experts (allows unlimited number of “Expert” nodes)
- Expert (content type)
  
  Title
  
  Photo
read more
Development

Rendering a Drupal 8 Link with Anchor and Destination

/ August 10, 2019

I’m working on a site that contains several complicated views (many exposed filters). The views render entities using a couple different view modes. These view modes use Display Suite. Within these view modes I’ve leveraged DS custom fields for several needs.

I needed to render a node “Edit” link within some of these view modes. The user would click the edit link, edit the node, then click “Save”. The system would then bring the user to the exact position of the page they were on before, filters and settings intact.

This type of solution would work without Display Suite (leveraging other methods). You’re getting a DS-based example because that’s what the site called for.

In my particular case I needed to separate the anchor from the edit link. If you’re okay having them in the same place you could skip Step 1 and just include the anchor within the markup for the edit link.

read more
Photography

Boston – Summer 2019

/ July 28, 2019

read more

Getting a Field from an Entity in Drupal 8

/ June 14, 2019

// @see https://drupal.stackexchange.com/a/99711/28091
//
// Using magic methods we can check if a specific property of the first item
// in the field has a value. $entity->field_name is equivalent to
// $entity->__get('field_name')). This may not be as safe as using
// ->get('field_name') but is useful. Read on...
//
// For simple text fields, booleans, etc. we can ask for ->value, for an
// entity reference we'd look at ->target_id. ->uri and ->title for a link.
// ->format and ->value for a long text field. Etc.
//
// Due to how __get('field_name') works, if the field doesn't exist on the
// entity, an InvalidArgumentException will not be thrown. If instead you
// use get('field_name') an exception would be thrown if field_name didn't
// exist on the entity. You would want to, in this case, check if the
// entity has a field with $entity->hasField('field_name');
//
// So, to see if a field exists and has a value, you can use, for example:
// if (isset($entity->field_name->target_id)) {}
if (!isset($this->entity()->field_fullcalendar_events->value)) {
  return $build;
}

// If we need to loop through multiple items/values in a field (even if
// there is only one), you can either ask for an array using ->getValue(),
// or you can foreach the field using
// foreach ($entity->field_name as $field_item) {}. If you use this approach
// the items are objects. This is convenient for field types that have more
// methods. For example, you can get to the referenced taxonomy term via
// $field_item->entity->name->value, $field_item->entity->tid->value, etc.
foreach ($this->entity()->field_location as $field_item) {
  $location_name = $field_item->entity->name->value;
}

// @see https://drupal.stackexchange.com/a/99711/28091

// Using magic methods we can check if a specific property of the first item

// in the field has a value. $entity->field_name is equivalent to

// $entity->__get('field_name')). This may not be as safe as using

// ->get('field_name') but is useful. Read on...

// For simple text fields, booleans, etc. we can ask for ->value, for an

// entity reference we'd look at ->target_id. ->uri and ->title for a link.

// ->format and ->value for a long text field. Etc.

// Due to how __get('field_name') works, if the field doesn't exist on the

// entity, an InvalidArgumentException will not be thrown. If instead you

// use get('field_name') an exception would be thrown if field_name didn't

// exist on the entity. You would want to, in this case, check if the

// entity has a field with $entity->hasField('field_name');

// So, to see if a field exists and has a value, you can use, for example:

// if (isset($entity->field_name->target_id)) {}

if (!isset($this->entity()->field_fullcalendar_events->value)) {

return $build;

}

// If we need to loop through multiple items/values in a field (even if

// there is only one), you can either ask for an array using ->getValue(),

// or you can foreach the field using

// foreach ($entity->field_name as $field_item) {}. If you use this approach

// the items are objects. This is convenient for field types that have more

// methods. For example, you can get to the referenced taxonomy term via

// $field_item->entity->name->value, $field_item->entity->tid->value, etc.

foreach ($this->entity()->field_location as $field_item) {

$location_name = $field_item->entity->name->value;

}

Development

Display-only Pseudo Fields in Drupal 8

/ April 7, 2019

In the past I’ve been happy to rely on Display Suite to create what I call “Frontend Only” (DSField) fields (which I created via php). These fields appeared in the Manage Displays screens so that site admins can easily drag them around in the display as needed. As it turns out, you can achieve nearly the same result using a few built-in hooks in Drupal 8. The Display Suite DSField plugin has a few handy helpers like the ability to only show the field on specific display mode forms (e.g., show the field on Full content but not on Teaser). You can still control whether or not the display-only field renders if you use the core hooks, so we’ll be okay.

Before I show the code, let me give some background.

read more
Development

Tideways and Xhgui using Lando

/ March 18, 2019

While I prefer using Valet+ for my Drupal development, I have been asked a few times to share my Lando + Tideways setup. I can’t go into too many details at this point, because it’s been a while since I’ve used this, but here’s my setup. I’ve included some documentation within some of the files (especially at the bottom of .lando.yml).

You can see some explanation and screenshots of Tideways and Xhgui in my Tideways and Xhgui using Dev Desktop post if you need a bit of an introduction. Also, you may be interested in seeing how I got Tideways running with Valet+.

This example is for Drupal 7. You can rework it easily to work with Drupal 8. The .conf may not be required in either case.

read more
Uncategorized

Twig Caching Issues in Acquia Cloud Enterprise

/ March 11, 2019

I’ve recently run into an issue where my site (on Acquia Cloud Enterprise) has node displays that were flip-flopping between an older version of a Twig template file, and the most recent version. I tried all combinations of drush cr, varnish cache clearing, and clearing the cache through the Drupal UI.

After reading through No reliable method exists for clearing the Twig cache, I landed on this page at Acquia: https://support.acquia.com/hc/en-us/articles/360005167754-Drupal-8-Twig-cache

I SSH’d into the production server I always SSH into, and I ran the command as shown. I did this repeatedly. I did a drush cr after. I did a drush cr before. Nothing was working. My pages were showing up with the old template, or the new template, and it seemed to be at random.

Ultimately I re-read the documentation page, more thoroughly this time, and discovered this: “connect to each web server instance and run a command like this…“

Ahah! EACH web server.

So, I logged into the Acquia Cloud interface, found the other production server’s connection string (myuser@someserver.prod.hosting.acquia.com), connected, and ran the same command. After another drush cr all of the pages were using the new template.

That’ll teach me to jump straight to executing commands without reading the instructions carefully.

read more
Development

Migrating Into Existing Nodes in Drupal 8, Including Rollback Missing from Source

/ February 7, 2019

Please read this entire post (including the disclaimer at the bottom) before you put any of it to use.

The site I’m basing this off had an existing set of nodes and a new migration that had the same nodes (and many more) in the data source. I wanted to map the existing nodes to their migration-based counterparts and treat every node as if it originated from the migration.

As of today, using a few patches makes it easy (thanks contributors!) to rollback items that no longer exist in a D8 migration’s source data. See Migrate support for deleting items no longer in the incoming data and Implement rollback of items no longer in source data

With these patches you can import and rollback in two commands:

PHP

drush mi mymigration_name_here --update drush migrate-rollback --missing-from-source mymigration_name_here

1
2

drush mi mymigration_name_here --update
drush migrate-rollback --missing-from-source mymigration_name_here

What if the data that you’re migrating (and rolling back if removed) already existed in Drupal before you started using the migration? If you attempt to migrate content, then rollback removed items, you will find that the items that no longer exist in the source will not be deleted if they existed before the migration.

First, I should describe how I’m pulling data into existing nodes.

This is as simple as populating the node ID in the process section of your migration YML, like this:

PHP

process: nid: existing_nid

1
2

process:
nid: existing_nid

read more

Development

Combining Steps in Behat for Drupal

/ January 22, 2019

Lately I have found myself repeating several lines of behat steps over and over again. Here is a sample of the behat code I use to choose a specific checkbox from an entity browser popup:

And I press the "field_carousel_slides_0_subform_field_carousel_slide_img_entity_browser_entity_browser" button
And I wait for AJAX to finish
And I switch to the iframe "entity_browser_iframe_ifde_media_image_browser"
Then I should see the button "Embed"
When I click "Use existing image"
And I check checkbox 3 in the element "#entity-browser-ifde-media-image-browser-form"
And I press the "Embed" button
And I wait for AJAX to finish

And I press the "field_carousel_slides_0_subform_field_carousel_slide_img_entity_browser_entity_browser" button

And I wait for AJAX to finish

And I switch to the iframe "entity_browser_iframe_ifde_media_image_browser"

Then I should see the button "Embed"

When I click "Use existing image"

And I check checkbox 3 in the element "#entity-browser-ifde-media-image-browser-form"

And I press the "Embed" button

And I wait for AJAX to finish

There are a few steps in here that are custom, but explaining them would be beyond the scope of this post; just assume they do what they describe (switching focus to an iframe, and clicking a checkbox).

The issue I was having is that every time I wanted to do that one action (pick an image from an entity browser) I was repeating all 8 lines of code.

I began looking for ways of making this set of steps repeatable. After some failed attempts at extending MinkContext and MinkAwareContext I came across scenario hooks via this StackOverflow post. I discovered the @BeforeScenario, which is executed before every scenario in each feature (where it’s used). Using this hook to access contexts from other contexts was documented on behat.org but required a few tweaks for the Drupal implementation. Here is what I ended up doing (based on the default FeatureContext.php you get when you install behat for the project:

Development

Adding Level Number Class to Menu Items in Drupal 8

/ January 15, 2019

This is a quick post showing how to add level classes to menu items in Drupal 8.

Here’s the result, showing the additional menu--level-N and menu-item--level-N classes:

Step 1: Create a New Twig template File

Determine which Twig template you need to override. I recommend reading the official docs on this. In my case, for a menu called infofor, I copied docroot/core/themes/classy/templates/navigation/menu.html.twig to docroot/themes/custom/mytheme/templates/navigation/menu--infofor.html.twig .

Step 2: Update the Twig Code

read more

Example Architecture