Come together with the global Drupal community in Rotterdam, 28 Sept – 1 Oct 2026. Sessions, contribution, connection, and Early Bird savings until 8 June.Somewhere around the 1.10 version of pathauto some functionality was added (look at the function pathauto_menu) that provided a new feature whereby the include files that extend pathauto can be used to provide listings of items based upon the beginning of their alias.
So, we know the following things:
- This functionality is not used very often (google search for a telltale section of the URL).
- It was the source of the security issue back in August.
- It isn't consistent with the stated purpose of pathauto (creating aliases automatically)
- It is duplicated (at least to some extent) with other modules like views
So, I propose that we remove it. I'm making this issue mostly to collect feedback. I plan on removing it in the run-up to the 5.0 version. That way anybody using it will have to upgrade to 5.0 where they will see a notice about changes in functionality and they (hopefully) won't be surprised that Pathauto has changed.
| Comment | File | Size | Author |
|---|---|---|---|
| #4 | pathauto_remove_listing_0.patch | 7.58 KB | greggles |
| #3 | pathauto_remove_listing.patch | 3.28 KB | greggles |
Comments
Comment #1
gregglesBad title - the part I want to discuss here is the listing page that shows nodes that have aliases that begin with a user supplied string.
This is not the place to discuss index aliases.
Comment #2
m3avrck commentedAgreed on all points.
This is a similar feature to index aliases which we seem to be in agreement about removing as well. This listing feature is nearly identical but is a source of problems.
When it was introduced, views wasn't as widespread, so it could be argued it *was* useful. But now with the profileration of views module, this feature is redundant and really out of scope for what this module does.
Time to trim the fat and say bye bye to this feature starting in version 5 :-)
Comment #3
gregglesHere's the patch. I think I got all instances of this. I also added a message about it to the changelog.
Comment #4
gregglesRemoving the index aliases is basically the same thing as the listing page though the features are different, the code is intermingled.
Updated patch does both.
Comment #5
gregglesApplied in the 5.x--2 branch.
Comment #6
gregglesI should note that I added some documentation here: http://drupal.org/node/124462
That explains how to get this functionality with views.
Comment #7
(not verified) commented