Talking Drupal #496 - Getting Back to Drupal Basics

Today we are talking about Drupal Basics, Why we got away from
them, and what we do to bring them back with guest Mike Anello.
We’ll also cover Entity Reference Override as our module of the
week.


For show notes visit:
https://www.talkingDrupal.com/496
Topics

Where did this idea come from

Why do you feel more basic content is necessary

How did Drupal get away from the basics

How can we get more basic talks into Drupal events

How do we balance basic content with new topics like recipes
or Drupal CMS

How do we entice speakers to take these talks

Could this adversely affect attendance

Question from Stephen: How do we address virtual events and
that they are preferred by a younger crowd

Will Florida Drupal Camp have a track

Guests

Mike Anello - drupaleasy.com ultimike
Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan
John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi
Kathy Beck - kbeck303
MOTW Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu


Brief description:

Have you ever wanted to replace a text field on entities
you reference in your Drupal site? There’s a module for that.



Module name/project name:

Entity Reference Override



Brief history

How old: created in Sep 2016 by Jeff Eaton, though recent
releases are by Benjamin Melançon (mlncn) of Agaric

Versions available: 2.0.0-beta3 which works with Drupal
10.1 or 11



Maintainership

Actively maintained

Security coverage, yes but needs a stable release

Test coverage

Documentation - user guide

Number of open issues: 13 open issues, 2 of which are
bugs against the 2.0.x branch



Usage stats:

2,004 sites



Module features and usage

The module defines a new field type, with associated
widgets and formatters.

Your site editors will see a normal entity reference
field (autocomplete or select) with an additional text field.
Text provided in that additional field can be used to
override a specific field in the referenced entity’s display,
or add a class to its rendered markup.

This could be handy in use cases like showing people with
project-specific roles, or showing related articles with the
summary tweaked to be more relevant to the main content being
viewed.

It’s not a super-common need, but if you need this
capability, it can save having to set up a more complicated
content architecture with some kind of intermediary entity

I thought this module would be interesting because
today’s guest, Mike Anello, is listed as one of the
maintainers. Mike, what can you tell us about your history
with the module and how you’ve used it?