Entity API 8.0

Wolfgang Ziegler

fago // @the_real_fago

• Maintainer of the Entity API module
• co-Maintainer of the Entity & Form core components
• Maintainer of various contrib modules
• Rules, Field Collection, Profile2, ...
  
• CEO of drunomics
  

Outline

• A little bit of history...
  
• Working with entities & fields
  
• Provide a new entity type
• Entity Validation API
• Querying
• Configuration Entities, Typed Data
• Comparison to Drupal 7

Entities in Drupal 7

• Side-effect of Field API being decoupled from nodes
  
• Introduced very late in the cycle
• Vastly unfinished
  

Entity module to the rescue!

Drupal 8: Let's complete it!

Put Entity module in core?

Ok, so we need...

• Class based entity objects

• EnitityInterface
  
• Full CRUD storage controllers
  

But thats' not enough

We also need...

• Unification of fields and properties
  
• Metadata about fields / properties
• Validation API
• Re-usable components built on top
  

Entities are content?

Entities

=

Content

+

Configuration

Working with entities

Photo source:  Bob Jagendorf, flickr.com/photos/bobjagendorf/

$manager = \Drupal::entityManager();
$entity = $manager
  ->getStorageController('comment')
  ->load($id);
$entity->getEntityTypeId();
$entity->label();
$entity->id();

Entity types

$entity_type = $entity_manager
                 ->getDefinition('node');

$entity_type->id() == 'node'

$entity_type
  ->getClass()
$entity_type
  ->hasKey('label')
$entity_type
  ->isSubclassOf('ContentEntityInterface')

Use methods!

 if ($node->isPromoted()) {
   $title = $node->getTitle();
 }
 elseif ($node->isPublished()) {
   $node->setTitle(
     $node->getAuthor()
       ->getUsername()
   );
 }

Translation

echo $entity
  ->getTranslation('de')
  ->title->value;

$translation = $entity->getTranslation('de');
$translation->language() == 'de';$translation->title->value = 'German title';

$translation = $manager
  ->getTranslationFromContext($entity);
echo $translation->label();

$entity = $translation->getUntranslated();

Iterating

foreach ($entity as $field_name => $items) {

  $items instanceof FieldItemListInterface

  foreach ($items as $item) {

    $item instanceof FieldItemInterface

    echo $item->target_id;
    echo $item->entity->label();
  }
} 

Everything
on a content entity
is a field!

Different flavours of fields

Fields

=

Base fields

(Node title, Node id, User name, User roles, ...)

+

Bundle fields

(Node body, Node tags, User tags, ... - all configurable fields)

Configurable fields

• are fields provided by field.module
• managed via the Configuration system
  
• appear in the UI by default
• implement the same interfaces as others

Module provided fields

hook_entity_base_field_info()hook_entity_base_field_info_alter()


hook_entity_bundle_field_info()
hook_entity_bundle_field_info_alter()


$module = $field_definition->getProvider();

Field storage

• handled by the Entity Storage
  (even for configurable fields)
  
• custom (modules take over)
• none (Computed fields)
  

Computed fields

allow you to
compute field item properites
when they are accessed.

  echo $node->body->processed;
 echo $node->uid->entity->label(); 

Getting field definitions

$field_definitions = 
$em->getBaseFieldDefinitions($entity_type_id);

$field_definitions =
$em->getFieldDefinitions($etype_id, $bundle);

Config entities & Fields?

is_string($node->title) == FALSE
is_string($view->name) == TRUE 

Providing a new
content entity type

Entity class

/**
 * Defines the comment entity class.
 *
 * @ContentEntityType(
 *   id = "comment",
 *   label = @Translation("Comment"),
 *   bundle_label = @Translation("Content type"),
 *   controllers = {
 *     "storage" = "Drupal\comment\CommentStorageController",
 *     "access" = "Drupal\comment\CommentAccessController",
 *     "view_builder" = "Drupal\comment\CommentViewBuilder",
 *     "form" = {
 *       "default" = "Drupal\comment\CommentFormController",
 *       "delete" = "Drupal\comment\Form\DeleteForm"
 *     },
 *     "translation" = "Drupal\comment\CommentTranslationController"
 *   },
 *   base_table = "comment",
 *   uri_callback = "comment_uri",
 *   fieldable = TRUE,
 *   translatable = TRUE,
 *   entity_keys = {
 *     "id" = "cid",
 *     "bundle" = "field_id",
 *     "label" = "subject",
 *     "uuid" = "uuid"
 *   },
 *   links = {
 *     "canonical" = "comment.permalink",
 *     "delete-form" = "comment.confirm_delete",
 *     "edit-form" = "comment.edit_page",
 *     "admin-form" = "comment.bundle"
 *   }
 * )
 */
class Comment extends ContentEntityBase implements CommentInterface {

Define your fields!

class Comment extends ContentEntityBase implements CommentInterface {

  public static function baseFieldDefinitions(EntityTypeInterface $entity_type) {

    $fields['cid'] = FieldDefinition::create('integer')
      ->setLabel(t('Comment ID'))
      ->setDescription(t('The comment ID.'))
      ->setReadOnly(TRUE);

    $fields['uuid'] = FieldDefinition::create('uuid')
      ->setLabel(t('UUID'))
      ->setDescription(t('The comment UUID.'))
      ->setReadOnly(TRUE);

    $fields['pid'] = FieldDefinition::create('entity_reference')
      ->setLabel(t('Parent ID'))
      ->setSetting('target_type', 'comment')

    return $fields;
  }
}

Widgets & Formatters!

     $fields['title'] = FieldDefinition::create('string')
      ->setLabel(t('Title'))
      ->setRequired(TRUE)
      ->setTranslatable(TRUE)
      ->setRevisionable(TRUE)
      ->setSettings(array(
        'default_value' => '',
        'max_length' => 255,
      ))
      ->setDisplayOptions('view', array(
        'label' => 'hidden',
        'type' => 'string',
        'weight' => -5,
      ))
      ->setDisplayOptions('form', array(
        'type' => 'string',
        'weight' => -5,
      ))
      ->setDisplayConfigurable('form', TRUE);

Storage

 class CommentStorageController extends FieldableDatabaseStorageController implements CommentStorageControllerInterface {


  /**
   * {@inheritdoc}
   */
  public function getMaxThread(EntityInterface $comment) {
    $query = $this->database->select('comment', 'c')
      ->condition('entity_id', $comment->entity_id->value)
      ->condition('field_id', $comment->field_id->value)
      ->condition('entity_type', $comment->entity_type->value);
    $query->addExpression('MAX(thread)', 'thread');
    return $query->execute()
      ->fetchField();
  }

}

$manager->getStorageController('comment')->save($comment);

Storage in-dependent logic?

class Comment extends ContentEntityBase implements CommentInterface {

  /**
   * {@inheritdoc}
   */
  public function postSave($storage, $update = TRUE) {
    parent::postSave($storage, $update);

    $this->releaseThreadLock();
    //...
  }

}

Field storage

I
V

Entity storage

Fieldable entities

I
V

Extendable entities

ViewBuilder

$manager->getViewBuilder('comment')->view($comment);

Forms

\Drupal::service('entity.form_builder')
  ->getForm($comment);


\Drupal::service('entity.form_builder')
  ->getForm($comment, 'delete');

Access control

 /**
 * Access controller for the comment entity.
 *
 * @see \Drupal\comment\Entity\Comment.
 */
class CommentAccessController extends EntityAccessController {
 // ...

}

$manager->getAccessController('comment')
  ->access($comment, 'view');

Entity lists

$entityManager
  ->getListController('contact_category')
  ->render();

There is a pattern!

Controllers

provide re-usable functionality

based upon

a well-defined interface

Controllers

allow you to easily

customize certain aspects of

your entity type

Controllers

Controller?
MVC?

#1976158

Controllers

II
V

Handlers

Fields

allow you to provide

re-usable behaviour along with storage

UUID Field

(no UI)

Language field

Path field

-function path_entity_insert(EntityInterface $entity) {
-  if ($entity instanceof ContentEntityInterface && $entity->hasField('path')) {
-  ....

+ class PathItem extends FieldItemBase {
+
+  /**
+   * {@inheritdoc}
+   */
+  public function insert() {
+  ....

and more...

• "created" field

• "changed" field
• ...
  

Entity Validation API

• decoupled from form validation -> REST
  
• makes use of Symfony Validator component
• based upon Constraint plugins

Define constraints

    $fields['mail'] = FieldDefinition::create('email')
      ->setLabel(t('Email'))
      ->setDescription(t('The email of this user.'))
      ->setSetting('default_value', '')
      ->setPropertyConstraints(
        'value',
        array('UserMailUnique' => array()
      ));

Defaults based on field types

Validate!

    $violations = $entity->validate();    // PASSED!!!    $this->assertEqual($violations->count(), 0);

    // Try setting a too long string as UUID.
    $test_entity->uuid->value = $this->randomString(129);
    $violations = $test_entity->validate();
   // FAILED!!!    $this->assertTrue($violations->count() > 0);

    $violation = $violations[0];
    echo $violation->getMessage();

    $violation->getRoot() === $entity';
    $violation->getPropertyPath() == 'field_test_text.0.format'
    $violation->getInvalidValue();

Constraint plugins

 /**
 * Range constraint.
 *
 * Overrides the symfony constraint to use Drupal-style replacement patterns.
 *
 * @Plugin(
 *   id = "Range",
 *   label = @Translation("Range", context = "Validation"),
 *   type = { "integer", "float" }
 * )
 */
class RangeConstraint extends Range {

  public $minMessage = 'This value should be %limit or more.';
  public $maxMessage = 'This value should be %limit or less.';

  /**
   * Overrides Range::validatedBy().
   */
  public function validatedBy() {
    return '\Symfony\Component\Validator\Constraints\RangeValidator';
  }
}

Widgets map
violations
to form elements!

Entity query

       // Make sure there are no active blocks for these feeds.
     $ids = \Drupal::entityQuery('block')
        ->condition('plugin', 'aggregator_feed_block')
        ->condition('settings.feed', array_keys($entities))
        ->execute();
      if ($ids) {
        ...

• propertyCondition(), fieldCondition() ?
  -> Just condition()!
  
• Uses an entity query service as defined by the storage
• Works independently of the storage
  

Do not directly

query your database

outside of

your storage controller

(or entity query service)

You do not care about MongoDB?

Multi-lingual

Schema changes

Language,

Relationship &

Aggregation Support

Configuration entities

 /**
 * Defines the Node type configuration entity.
 *
 * @ConfigEntityType(
 *   id = "node_type",
 *   label = @Translation("Content type"),
 *   controllers = {
 *     "access" = "Drupal\node\NodeTypeAccessController",
 *     "form" = {
 *       "add" = "Drupal\node\NodeTypeFormController",
 *       "edit" = "Drupal\node\NodeTypeFormController",
 *       "delete" = "Drupal\node\Form\NodeTypeDeleteConfirm"
 *     },
 *     "list_builder" = "Drupal\node\NodeTypeListBuilder",
 *   },
 *   admin_permission = "administer content types",
 *   config_prefix = "type",
 *   bundle_of = "node",
 *   entity_keys = {
 *     "id" = "type",
 *     "label" = "name"
 *   },
 *   links = {
 *     "add-form" = "node.add",
 *     "edit-form" = "node.type_edit",
 *     "delete-form" = "node.type_delete_confirm"
 *   }
 * )
 */
class NodeType extends ConfigEntityBase implements NodeTypeInterface {

 echo $type->name;

 class NodeType extends ConfigEntityBase implements NodeTypeInterface {

  public $type;

  public $uuid;

  public $name;

  public $has_title = TRUE;

  public $title_label = 'Title';

//.....

}

 $node_type->toArray()

Typed data API

• Primitives
• ComplexData
• List

Comparison to D7
entity module

Entity wrapper

I
V

Entity

(mostly)

EntityAPIController

=~

EntityStorageController

+

EntityViewBuilder

Entity property info

I

V

Field definitions

EntityAPIControllerExportable

~

ConfigStorageController

So far missing...

• EntityUIController
• we've got forms though
  
• EntityViewsController
• starting...
  

We are almost there...

Angelo DeSantis, flickr.com/photos/angeloangelo

Current work areas

• Entity cache support (Render caching is done)
• Unified repository for gettting field definitions
  -> FieldStorageDefinitionInterface
  
• Automatic database schema generation
  -> Translatable storage for all content entities!
  

Modules,

start re-using
entity field storage
for your module data!

(no UI exposure required)

Get involved!

[META] Complete the Entity Field API
http://drupal.org/node/2095603

Questions?