Adding and reusing a field

Last modified: November 25, 2009 - 22:44

Let's begin with creating a last name field. We will add this to users and to the 'picture' node type so that it's possible to put names on them even if the author is not a user.

Our field type will be text. We will store this in SQL, which is the default anyways:

<?php
$field
= array(
 
// It is strongly advised to prefix the field name with the name of the module
  // that defines it, to avoid name clashes. Fields created through Field UI are
  // prefixed with 'field_'
 
'field_name' => 'mymodule_lastname',
 
'type' => 'text',
 
'cardinality' => 1, // Not required, as it's the default
);
field_create_field($field);
?>

Users will use common HTML text input fields to enter the data -- this is called a widget. We will format these as Plain text -- we do not need HTML tags in there.

<?php
$instance
= array(
 
'field_name' => 'lastname',
 
'object_type' => 'user',
 
'bundle' => 'user',
 
'label' => t('Last name'),
 
'description' => t('You can enter your last name here.'),
 
'widget' => array
   
'type' => 'text_textfield',
   
'weight' => 10,
  ),
);
field_create_instance($instance);
?>

Now to attach the same field to another bundle (here, node type 'picture'), that's very easy:

<?php
$instance
['object_type'] = 'node';
$instance['bundle'] = 'picture';
field_create_instance($instance);
?>

object_type is required

MartinTomes - October 27, 2009 - 10:53

The instance array needs an object_type element:

<?php
$instance
= array(
 
'field_name' => 'lastname',
 
'bundle' => 'user',
 
'object_type' => 'node',
 
'label' => t('Last name'),
 
'description' => t('You can enter your last name here.'),
 
'weight' => 10,
 
'widget' => array(
   
'type' => 'text_textfield',
   
'label' => t('Last name'),
  ),
);
field_create_instance($instance);
?>

Martin Tomes

Fixed in the article. Thanks

yched - November 25, 2009 - 22:44

Fixed in the article. Thanks !

 
 

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