D7 is out and it is wonderful. Many new features with the most exciting one (for me anyway) the ability to add fields in taxonomy terms. This makes the taxonomy look almost like a node. In fact in terms of storing content how different are they? I am building a new site in D7 and having trouble deciding when to use taxonomy and when to use content.
My suggestion for D8 is to merge taxonomy, book and node core modules and I am listing some advantages:
- Fewer modules
- Revisions in taxonomy
- Promote/demote terms
- Hierarchies in content
- edit Nodes attached to entities
- Simpler RDF (no?)
But the most important benefit would be that we would no longer consider nodes as something that is organised by taxonomies. Nodes would be organised by other nodes using something like node reference and the new References module.
In terms of coding this - no doubt it will not be trivial, but really, the fields module will not be affected much. I think all it is required is a mechanism to allow unlimited hierarchies in nodes. That can then replace the book and taxonomy modules.
Anybody thinks this is a good idea?
Thanks for your time.
Comments
I certainly do think that
I certainly do think that something needs to happen. I'm pretty happy now with most aspects of Drupal, but the number one question once you've added your content, is "How do I organise my content?" There is no obvious answer to that question, which surely should be of most importance to something claiming to be a "Content Management System".
I just found that your
I just found that your sentiment does have support:
"Can we build a more generic hierarchy API to be used for menus, books, taxonomy, etc?" at http://acquia.com/blog/drupalcon-buzz-can-we-say-r-word-drupal-8
Identifying the problem is
Replied to wrong post.
Contact me to contract me for D7 -> D10/11 migrations.
Identifying the problem is
Identifying the problem is step one, and that has been done well in the original post. However, the solution proposed in the original post has already been left behind in Drupal 7, as 'node' is only one type of entity in Drupal 7. Up until Drupal 6, nodes (and node sub-types aka content types) were the only entity in Drupal, and were everything in Drupal. But with Drupal 7, nodes are only one type of entity, with core providing a few others - users, comments, files and taxonomy. On top of this, contributed modules can add more entity types (I'm working on a module that defines an entity type right now). What this means is that a taxonomy, as it is now an entity, can now be used with the other entity types - users, comments, or even files - whereas previously it could only be used with nodes. Integrating taxonomy to nodes would be a step back, not forward, as that would remove the ability to attach taxonomy to the other entity types.
Contact me to contract me for D7 -> D10/11 migrations.
Does it have to remove that ability?
Thanks for the insight in the entity workings. Indeed, I agree, if taxonomy and node modules are merged then attaching a node to another node, or attaching a node to any other entity is a function that should be preserved. I am not sure that the merger will have to exclude that. In fact I should be adding this as another advantage in the original post.