Custom node routes

20th Jul 2021

Sometimes it can be handy to have extra pages for a node (or any entity). For example:

  • To show different sets of information on separate pages for a single product, page, or thing.
  • So you can set different access requirements on each page for a node.
  • You want to block access to the ordinary route (e.g. node/123 and its aliased equivalent) for some reason, but you still want some other page to represent that node.

I've found a few people with that need on Drupal slack before, so I thought I'd write a guide because it's surprisingly...

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Entity Extra Field module: display blocks & views amongst fields

14th Jun 2021

I'm a fan of configuring things for display through Drupal's admin UI. It gives site builders confidence and power. What if you want to place blocks or views listings in amongst fields on pages of content? For example, to display:

  • A listing (view) of related content, such as accessories for a product
  • A standard contact block, advert, or some other calls to action in the middle of the content, exactly where the user is best 'caught' in their journey, rather than having to stick those in sidebars or after all the content fields.
  • Some specific value(s) pulled from fields on some indirectly related entity, through a token, such as details from a taxonomy term representing the 'section' that a page is in.
  • Consistent relevant links on user profiles to take people to common destinations

This is where the Entity Extra Field module (entity_extra_field) comes in. It supports embedding blocks, views or values to be replaced via tokens. So a site builder can set these up to be managed just like ordinary fields on the page (whether it's a node, term, paragraph, or any other type of content).

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Context-aware blocks

9th Jun 2021

Defining your own Drupal block plugins in custom code is really powerful, but sometimes you can feel limited by what those blocks have access to. Your block class is like a blank canvas that you know you'll be pulling data into, but how should you get that data from the surrounding page? Often you have to resort to fetching the entity for the current page out of its route parameters (e.g. on a node page), in order to get the values out of its fields that you want to display. Plugins can actually have a context passed to them directly...

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ComputerMinds are diversifying

1st Apr 2021

The last year has highlighted to us all how important it is for the global community to come together and solve problems. We rate ourselves highly at ComputerMinds, and figure it's time to share and stretch our abilities to the full. So I'm here on this special day to announce that we are branching out beyond just resolving bugs on websites, to fixing any kind of bugs in any problem space. There's so much market potential, we're really quite excited at the possibilities for bringing innovative solutions to the world!

Medical bugs

The ugliest bug of them all, COVID-19, has...

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