By col_edinburgh on

OK in drupal 6 I had a rule set up to delete child nodes when the parent node was deleted. I used VBO module with a view and the action Execute a VBO programmatically on node.

There is no longer an action to do this in drupal 7. Can anyone advise how to go about doing this with the rules available.

Cheers

⋅ Categories: Drupal 7.x

Comments

bradallenfisher’s picture

bradallenfisher commented

This handy little function will delete all children nodes that reference a parent node when you delete it. Helpful if you have multiple users adding content to your site.  Or if a workflow of attaching many nodes to one node has a short life cycle. For instance, if a system of petitions attaches requests to it, it is helpful to be able to delete all requests when you delete the petition.

Create a simple module with the code below

In the info file:

name = mymodule
description = Utility module that performs operations on nodes
project = Custom Modules
core = 7.x

In the module file:

/**
 * Implements hook_node_delete().
 */
function mymodule_node_delete($node) {
	
  $query = new EntityFieldQuery();
  $query->entityCondition('entity_type', 'node')->fieldCondition('field_referencing_parent_node', 'target_id', $node->nid);
  $results = $query->execute();
	
  if (!empty($results['node'])) {
    $nodes = array_keys($results['node']);
    node_delete_multiple($nodes);
  }	
}

Replace field_referencing_parent_node with the field that references the parent node. Replace mymodule with the actual module name. Entity Field Query will do the rest.

Check out more recipes here: http://bytesofweb.com/recipe/delete-all-children-nodes-when-parent-deleted

ayesh’s picture

ayesh commented

Does this work when multiple nodes refer the same node?
Suppose node A and B refer node Y, and will this module will delete node Y when deleting node B, making node A's reference invalid, right?

What's new and changing in PHP 8.4