[1.0.x] Entity Tracer

Created on 18 April 2024, 7 months ago
Updated 19 May 2024, 6 months ago

Description

Entity Tracer is designed to make developers' lives easier by providing a UI that contextualizes the entity references on a site. Lets say a dev wants to update a field in a node, but that field actually exists on an entity that is nested several layers deep. Normally finding this kind of information would take a lot of hunting in the UI through various fields and entity types. Entity Tracer provides an easy one-stop place to view these kinds of relationships. Here is an example where I've added to the basic page content type.

This shows every entity reference that branches out from the Basic page, including the nested ones. It goes even further by providing a link to each field edit page for each referenced entity. Also it deliberately lists both the human-readable and machine names just in case they don't match (see the field “Slide type” who’s machine name is `field_tag` above).

Now let's say the dev want to change something about the Tags taxonomy being referenced in “Slide Type.” They know that taxonomy is referenced on the Basic page, but they worry that it might be referenced in other places and that changing it might have unintended consequences. That is what the “Up” direction in the UI is for.

Now the results show that the Tags taxonomy is also in use on the Article node type in two different places, one buried in an paragraph called Article Section and again in a regular field called Tags. Note that this “up” selection also backtraces and links the fields just like “down” does.

Similar Projects

  • Entity References Map : Is similar but only makes maps on an entity by entity basis, whereas Entity Tracer gives the entire possible context for the given entity type
  • ERD : Does show nested relationships, but you have to know what you're looking for to use it. For example, if I wanted to get the info provided in the first screenshot of this post I would have to already know that "Basic Page" references "accordion" and then click that in the ERD UI
  • Entity Relationship Diagram : Shows a lot of the same information as Entity Tracer, but the provided information is harder to use. You cannot filter by bundle and the report shows every field, making it more difficult to parse. Also, for fields it only shows their machine name and not their label

Finally, none of these comparable modules offer links to the entity types in question, nor do they provide the "up" functionality mentioned above. Also, each of them are reliant on a third party js library whereas Entity Tracer has no dependencies.

Project link

https://www.drupal.org/project/entity_tracer

📌 Task
Status

Fixed

Component

module

Created by

🇺🇸United States rloos289

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Production build 0.71.5 2024