By berdir on
Change record status: 
Published (View all published change records)
Project: 
Drupal core
Introduced in branch: 
8.x
Introduced in version: 
Issue links: 
https://www.drupal.org/node/2078387
Description: 

The interface EntityOwnerInterface has been introduced which provides modules a generic way to identify and change the owner of an entity. Previously, this was only possible with either a hardcoded list of entity types, or by assumptions like checking for an uid field, which could lead to false positives.

What that exactly means for an entity can differ, in Core, this interface is currently implemented by nodes, comments and files.

It can for example be used for modules that create related entities with the same owner, comment and entity_reference are two examples in core that do this or to notify the owner of an entity about something.

The owner has to be a user entity, the interface provides both setters and getters for the owner user entity and the ID.

7.x

// This would also match user entities, but there the uid is the primary key and must not be changed.
if (isset($entity->uid)) {
  $entity->uid = $new_owner->uid;
}

8.x

if ($entity instanceof EntityOwnerInterface) {
  $entity->setOwner($new_owner);
}
Impacts: 
Site builders, administrators, editors

Comments

traviscarden’s picture

traviscarden commented

Unless I'm overlooking the obvious, the code samples are testing the wrong variables and should actually be as follows:

7.x

// This would also match user entities, but there the uid is the primary key and must not be changed.
if (isset($new_owner->uid)) {
  $entity->uid = $new_owner->uid;
}

8.x

if ($new_owner instanceof EntityOwnerInterface) {
  $entity->setOwner($new_owner);
}
yareckon’s picture

yareckon commented

No, the entity has to implement the EntityOwnerInterface, not the user / new owner.