Features

The features module enables the capture and management of features in Drupal. A feature is a collection of Drupal entities which taken together satisfy a certain use-case.

Features provides a UI and API for taking different site building components from modules with exportables and bundling them together in a single feature module. A feature module is like any other Drupal module except that it declares its components (e.g. views, contexts, CCK fields, etc.) in its .info file so that it can be checked, updated, or reverted programmatically.

Examples of features might be:

• A blog
• A pressroom
• An image gallery
• An e-commerce t-shirt store

Compatibility Issues

• Drush: Version 6.x-1.2 and 7.x-1.0 will no longer work with Drush 4.4 or lower. In order to support the upcoming Drush 5 (and continue to support Drush 4.5) we needed to break back support for older versions of Drush. To upgrade your version of Drush to 4.5 or later, see the install instructions for upgrading using Pear.
• PHP 5.4 has changed array_diff_assoc and producing errors, see #1588596: Notice: Array to string conversion in features_export_prepare() (line 190 of features.export.inc)

The 7.x-2.x version

The 2.x branch greatly changes (and hopefully improves) the user interface of the Create/Recreate Features screen. In addition, it adds new functionality including:

• Ability to write your feature export directly to the Drupal file system (like drush fu).
• Ability to remove auto-detected items from your export.
• Ability to work with conflicting features.

The 7.x-2.x version is very compatible with feature exports created from the 7.x-1.x version. However, User Permission features will need to be re-exported, and Field features will be split into Field_Base and Field_Instance exports the next time you export. See New Field Bases and Instances in Features for more info.

There are currently no plans to port this new interface or new functionality to Drupal 6.

Drupal 8

A 3.x version of Features is planned for Drupal 8 to integrate with the new configuration management system. If you simply need to export simple site configuration, the D8 configuration management system should be used instead of Features. You will use Features in D8 to export bundled functionality (like a "photo gallery feature").

Documentation

• Getting started guide contributed by Clemens Tolboom, Itangalo
• README.txt For everyone
• API.txt For developers, site builders
• features.api.php For developers

Related Modules

• Features Override
• Strongarm - export system Variables
• FTools - misc tools for Features (most functionality incorporated into Features 7.x-2.x)
• Features Plumber (not needed with Features 7.x-2.x)
• Features Extra

Other resources

• Video introduction and tutorial by Mustardseed Media
• Features 2.0 presentation (pdf) @ BADcamp 2012 by mpotter
• Features presentation @ DrupalCon SF 2010 by jmiccolis
• Features presentation @ ADUG meetup by q0rban

Downloads