Do not require a 'title' field

The Needs Review Queue Bot → tested this issue. It either no longer applies to Drupal core, or fails the Drupal core commit checks. Therefore, this issue status is now "Needs work".

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Hi,
Since not able to create the branch for the latest version Drupal 11.x.

So Attaching the rerolled patch file for the core version 11.x.

[Copying from the since closed "Hiding the node title makes node form submission crash 🐛 Hiding the node title makes node form submission crash Active "]

It seems to me that everything should have a title, even in the case of a "Person" object. The title could be random, or constructed from something else, but you should always be able to count on an existing entity having a title of some kind just as you can count on it having an ID.

Also, I don't think handling this at the form level would be a good idea since someone might hide the title and then have custom code or a contrib module that provides the title. Preventing them from hiding the title would cause problems for them. If you let them do it but instead show a warning that would annoy people who know what they're doing and confuse others.

I suggest changing SqlContentEntityStorage::mapToStorageRecord to throw an exception if a field is required but empty. It already throws an exception in one case throw new EntityStorageException("Table mapping contains invalid field $field_name."); so adding a check in the same area doesn't seem out of place. You're going to get an exception in any case, it might as well give the user a clue what the problem is.

Hi,
I tried patch #65 ✨ Do not require a 'title' field Needs work in Drupal 11.x , but it didn’t work for me. I’m sharing the error that appears when I hide the field and try to save a node without a title.

Fixes should be in MRs

Issue summary appears to be missing sections too. Probably could use a title update too as that's very miss leading.

supriyak → closed merge request !10082

arunkumark → changed the visibility of the branch 2358537-do-not-require to hidden.

arunkumark → changed the visibility of the branch 9.4.x to hidden.

Created MR for the 11.x version. Moving to NR.

Hi,

Changed title from 'Do not require a 'title' field' to 'Remove 'not null' constraint from node title field/column.('Title' field present in node entity should not be mandatory.)'.

Thanks!

See tags

I'm not really sure if this is something core should support to be honest.

As expected, when you have a node with a NULL title a LOT of other things break horribly.

Just to name a few in the first few minutes of testing this:

1. You can't save a node because NodeForm::save uses the node's title in 2 places: the log context '%title' => $node->label(), and the t_args with $node->toLink() (EntityBase::toLink does not fail gracefully when $text is NULL and $this->label() returns NULL). Both of these throw fatal errors with a NULL title.

2. Once manually fixing the above I get a message Article has been created., that's not very helpful, but at least the view page works.

3. The Edit form throws a fatal error because the title is Edit @type @title where @title is $node->label()

4. The Revisions page throws a fatal error because the title is Revisions for %title

5. Deleting a node throws a fatal error because it tries to print a message The @type %title has been deleted.

And I'm sure there are many, many more examples.

The label function has to be able to return NULL because an entity type can have no label defined. There is an argument I suppose that all of these places should account for a NULL label return but given 99% of sites probably don't need this it doesn't seem like it passes the bar to be part of core.

Given contrib/custom modules can modify the base field definition to removing the required/not null flags I'm wondering if this should be closed as won't fix?