Field Api In Drupal Development

By Author: Dharmesh Aegis
Total Articles: 105
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Drupal is open source software and a platform supporting latest technologies that web offers. It is available for free and thus is an economic way for drupal developers to develop solutions for their clients. Drupal development is offered by many service providers and people use it for its rich features that it offers like modular, collaboration, user-friendly, standards and much more.
Drupal developers who want to get themselves involved directly in Drupal core development needs to know about Field API. The Field API is a major functionality in Drupal 7 which provides custom data types. Let us discuss about it in details for Drupal development. The first step would be to attach custom data fields to the entities. Field API allows to store, load, edit and render filed data after it has been attached. Any entity type can use Field API to make it fieldable and allowing fields to be attached to it. User interface is provided by modules which allow custom fields to manage via a web browser.
Field and instance are two data structures defined by Field API. The field instance is attached to a single bundle and bundle is ...
... set of fields.
Field definitions are represented as an array of key/value pairs.
array $field:
" id (integer, read-only)
" field_name (string)
" type (string)
" entity_types (array)
" cardinality (integer)
" translatable (integer)
" locked (integer)
" module (string, read-only)
" active (integer, read-only)
" deleted (integer, read-only)
" columns (array, read-only
" indexes (array).
" foreign keys: (optional)
" settings (array)
" storage (array) There are sub-array of key/value pairs that identify the storage backend that can be used for the field:
" type (string) The storage backend used by the field.
" module (string, read-only) The name of the module that implements the storage backend.
" active (integer, read-only) TRUE if the module is currently enabled while implementing the storage backend is currently enabled, FALSE otherwise.
" settings (array) A sub-array of key/value pairs of settings. Each storage backend defines and documents its own settings.
Field instance definitions are represented as an array of key/value pairs.
array $instance:
" id (integer, read-only)
" field_id (integer, read-only)
" field_name (string)
" entity_type (string)
" bundle (string)
" label (string)
" description (string)
" required (integer)
" default_value_function (string)
" default_value (array)
" deleted (integer, read-only)
" settings (array)
" widget (array) sub-array of key/value pairs which identify the Form API input widget for the field when used by this bundle are:
1. type (string)
2. settings (array)
3. weight (float)
4. module (string, read-only)
" display (array)
" default (array) A sub-array of key/value pairs describing the display options are:
1. label (string)
2. type (string)
3. settings (array)
4. weight (float)
5. module (string, read-only)
" some_mode: A sub-array of key/value pairs describes the display options which are used in the field being disoplayed in 'some_mode' view mode. These options are applied only at run time if view mode is not configured to use the default settings.
" other_mode
The (default) render arrays produced for field instances are documented atfield_attach_view().
When talking of Bundles they are represented by two strings: the first one is entity type and the second one is a bundle name.
" Field Types API.
" Field CRUD API.
" Field Attach API.
" Field Info API.
" Field Storage API.
" Field API bulk data deletion.
" Field language API.

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