Delete existing "unpublished" node paths when node is published

Sorry I missed this.

I'm pretty opposed to the idea as part of pathauto. I think it should be a submodule if anything, which would be pretty easy to write (hook_nodeapi, see if a node is getting published, look for the "current alias" based on the most recent pid, delete all aliases for the node except for that one).

I can't say if the best way would be to have this as a submodule or as part of pathauto, but I surely like the idea of this feature. So, +1 from me.

It would really help cut down on the vast amount of unwanted aliases in busy sites and make admins' lives a bit easier.

What is your pathauto 'update action' setting set to on admin/build/path/pathauto ? If it's set to 'Create new alias, delete old alias." this should be automatic.

I believe you meant ../admin/build/path/settings Dave. I already knew that there's this setting available (if I'm not mistaken 'create new - delete old' is the default anyways), so I agree that this is there for the exact reason/need of having to delete old aliases.

You have to give some credit to the feature request though, because one might have changed the default settings after initial setup and only realized they got themselves in such a situation described by Thomas in #0 after quite some time. If that has happened in a really busy site, the only easy way to get out of it is this feature. In other words this is not a setting one would choose for the 'Update action' on initial setup, but rather a helpful feature addition in an already useful module.

If you do insist in your opinion (and/or Greg's proposal in #2 that this could be in another submodule), go ahead and set this to 'won't fix', but I strongly think you should reconsider and get this implemented at some point. If you agree, then please set it to 'postponed'. I don't know what Thomas has to say in this though, since he is the one that originally filed this request and he seems to be facing an actual use case.

PS: if you finally decide to do this some time in the future, I think that implementation and UI wise it should be an extra setting (checkbox) 'bound' to the 'Create a new alias. Leave the existing alias functioning.' radio option. Its label could be something like 'Only delete old alias(es) once node gets published'.

That sounds good to me too, but as I've already said Thomas in #0 implies that they need the aliases while notes are not published(?). I'd argue saying that there's always revision history and I cannot possibly imagine why one would want to retain all old aliases, but I know that there is the case of people linking other nodes from their published content (using aliases) and I honestly do not know of any way (module) that automatically also updates these links if the aliases happen to change. You do get a lot of broken links this way and keeping a history of old aliases around in this case might prove handy for fixing these broken links!

Besides, we miss the case of people that have gotten themselves in such a situation already and need to remedy it by deleting the old aliases. I guess they could simply set it back to 'create new - delete old' and go through the process of re-saving each node with multiple old aliases. Again, too much manual work.

On a note here, we could simply provide some sql command (as a tech note in the README.txt) for this issue and spare us the trouble of implementing this in the module.

ok then 'Don't create alias for unpublished nodes' (or 'Create alias only for published nodes') sounds perfect if it gets implemented.

We are not introducing an option in the UI for this. It would be too much UI for a module that already has too much.

If anything we should make sure that people who need this can write a little module that overwrites the default behavior and stops the alias from getting created. And...I think that is possible. We have a checkbox value for whether or not the alias is created and pathauto's weight is 10. So a module with a weight less than that can jump in and do this as necessary.

Was there ever a module made to do this? I have a problem where a lot of my nodes never get published but new ones have the title and get the same name so the published ones get the -# extension even if the clean alias never gets published.

Sorry for bumping this old issue, but people looking for a solution to not having URL aliases for unpublished entities, this does the trick in Drupal 8:

/**
 * Implements hook_pathauto_alias_alter().
 */
function mymodule_pathauto_alias_alter(&$alias, array &$context) {
  $entity = reset($context['data']);

  // Do not generate an alias for unpublished entities.
  if ($entity instanceof EntityPublishedInterface && !$entity->isPublished()) {
    $alias = '';
  }
}

/**
 * Implements hook_entity_update().
 */
function mymodule_entity_update(EntityInterface $entity) {
  // Only act if this is the default revision.
  if (!$entity instanceof RevisionableInterface || !$entity->isDefaultRevision()) {
    return NULL;
  }

  // Only act if this is a published entity.
  if (!$entity instanceof EntityPublishedInterface || $entity->isPublished()) {
    return NULL;
  }

  // Unpublished entities may not have an URL alias.
  $source = '/' . $entity->toUrl()->getInternalPath();
  $alias = \Drupal::service('path.alias_manager')->getAliasByPath($source);
  if ($alias !== $source) {
    \Drupal::service('path.alias_storage')->delete([
      'source' => $source,
    ]);
  }
}

IMO this would be a nice functionality to be in the main module.