Automatically generate forms from config schema

2nd Oct 2024

Drupal's form API has been brilliant for many years. Still, recently I found myself wondering why I needed to build a configuration form if I already had a schema for my config. Defining a schema facilitates API-first validation (including some pretty smart constraints), specific typing (e.g. actual booleans or integers instead of '0' or '1' strings), and even translation in Drupal. 

That last part got me thinking; if Drupal automatically provides translation forms for typed configuration, why must I build a form? I started diving into the code and found config_translation_config_schema_info_alter() which maps certain config data types to element classes...

Read more

My text filter's placeholder content disappeared!

19th Jun 2024

A story of contributing a fix to Drupal... and a pragmatic workaround

When I upgraded a site from Drupal 10.1 to 10.2, I discovered a particularly serious bug: the login form on our client's site vanished ... which was pretty serious for this site which hid all content behind a login!

We had a custom text format filter plugin to render the login form in place of a custom token in text that editors set, on one of the few pages that anonymous users could access. Forms can have quite different cacheability to the rest of a page, and building...

Read more

Format Drush output for easy wins!

3rd Apr 2024

Drush, the brilliant command-line tool for Drupal, is capable of giving you its output in several ways. Its global --format parameter can be set to a type that you can use in useful ways. Most recently, I found this incredibly useful when I had made some configuration changes through Drupal's admin pages, and needed to then script those changes to automatically apply to hundreds of sites on a platform we manage.

I simply asked Drush for the value of the configuration I had set, formatted as the PHP code to set those values. Then I could drop...

Read more

Webform Protected Downloads

11th Mar 2024

I recently produced the first release of the Webform Protected Downloads module that is compatible with Drupal 10. It provides the ability for sites to have 'gated' content which users can download once they have filled out a form for their details. This can convert engaged visitors into leads, set up licenses for customers, or simply validate a user for access to a file. Put simply, as the project's description says, this module could be useful to you if:

  • You want to offer some files for download to either anonymous or registered users
  • You don't want those files to be...
Read more