Create Comment Entity without related NODE?

This is not a bug, it works as designed. Using the create new entity action creates an entity without saving it to the database. Before saving, you can use the set entity field value action to set the ID of the parent entity, and you probably want to set other field values as well. Once all field values are set, you can then save the new comment entity.

Thank you, @Jurgenhaas, will try that!

It worked!
Just not obvious: had a little effort trying to understand which fields were needed, what their names were and what kind of value they wanted to receive. So I opened a MySql interface and compared the tables, fields and values filled by data from a naturally-created Comment (i.e., from the form under a node entity), and then things worked out.
Thank you!

You're right, it's not obvious which entity type requires which fields. This would probably be a good suggestion for an improvement of the API-documentation on Drupal in general, because the same questions apply for module developers, not only for ECA users.

Hi Marco,
Which fields did you find were required in the end? Im running into this same issue but struggling to pick out which fields are have to be filled pre creation and which ones will fill themselves on creation.

To answer my own question, the fields I found had to be filled in on the newly created comment entity before save were:

entity_id (set to the nid of the node the comment is to attach to)
field_name (set to the field name of the comment field on the node)
subject
entity_type (in my case, just node)

When setting the final field (entity_type) I also selected to save the entity. This was enough to successfully create the comment and attach it to the node.

Very nice, @sprucmoose , those are the same fields I found, too! Sorry I didnt come here before.
In case it might help people who come around here, the steps I made to find those fields out where:

• create a Comment, the "normal way", without trying to use ECA (that will give me valid data into the database tables, from where I will be able to take some references)
• Run the ECA model using just that "Create (comment) Entity" action, and try to save it, withoui knowing it better (that will not work, I know, it sucks)
• get to the Recent Messages page, in /admin/reports/dblog
• inspect the error messages found there - some will eventually tell you something like ERROR ... SQL ... INSERT INTO ... and some COLUMN NAME whose absence it is complaining about
• then go to MySQL (this is possible for me only in a DEV environment, or I wouldnt get access to the PROD tables, in my case here), open the databse and search around those tables whose name start with "comment",
• try to find there a column with the same name as that one mentioned in the error message
• in that column name found inside the databse, find the value of the previously created Comment (that you made in "the normal way"
• try to take this value back to you ECA Model, and use the SET FIELD VALUE Action to insert this value to that field

Sometimes you will find out that the name of the COLUMN is not the name of the FIELD, but some of the changes needed to make it work may prove somewhat easy to infer (like turning something_nid into [something:nid]

This sounds all great, I wish this could be turned into a documentation page in the ECA Guide or a tutorial, as the information in the issue queue is hard to find. If anyone is up for that task, I'd be happy to guide you through the process.

Hi Jurgen, I would be more than happy to do this if you can point me in the direction of some instructions as to how

@sprucemoose nice! The ECA Guide is written in markdown and maintained on our GitLab instance at https://gitlab.lakedrops.com/drupal/documentation/eca

We've turned off signup because of spam. If you PM me your email address (maybe on Slack), then I can create an account for you. You could create a fork and write a page somewhere in the structure of the guide. We can still move it elsewhere later on then.

For further details, a chat on Slack (are you there?) is probably more practical.

Automatically closed - issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.