Problem/Motivation

Currently there is no simple way to get the parent of a referenced child entity.

I think that this problem will affect an even larger user base with media coming into core, which means a lot of images will be entity references. I guess right now the most common motivation for getting back references is data querying. With media entity references, getting the parent entity while doing template preprocessing will be become a common task for designers.

There is a _referringItem which is generated by the EntityReferenceFormatterBase, but it is unreliable (due to entity view caching?)

Proposed resolution

Make _referringItem reliable and cache safe.

Comments

hudri created an issue. See original summary.

wim leers’s picture

wim leers
Location Ghent 🇧🇪🇪🇺
commented
Title: Add reliable _referringItem to entity references » Add reliable _referringItem to entity reference fields
Component: entity system » entity_reference.module
Issue tags: +DX (Developer Experience), +Entity Field API

Version: 8.5.x-dev » 8.6.x-dev

Drupal 8.5.0-alpha1 will be released the week of January 17, 2018, which means new developments and disruptive changes should now be targeted against the 8.6.x-dev branch. For more information see the Drupal 8 minor version schedule and the Allowed changes during the Drupal 8 release cycle.

Version: 8.6.x-dev » 8.7.x-dev

Drupal 8.6.0-alpha1 will be released the week of July 16, 2018, which means new developments and disruptive changes should now be targeted against the 8.7.x-dev branch. For more information see the Drupal 8 minor version schedule and the Allowed changes during the Drupal 8 release cycle.

Version: 8.7.x-dev » 8.8.x-dev

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Version: 8.8.x-dev » 8.9.x-dev

Drupal 8.8.0-alpha1 will be released the week of October 14th, 2019, which means new developments and disruptive changes should now be targeted against the 8.9.x-dev branch. (Any changes to 8.9.x will also be committed to 9.0.x in preparation for Drupal 9’s release, but some changes like significant feature additions will be deferred to 9.1.x.). For more information see the Drupal 8 and 9 minor version schedule and the Allowed changes during the Drupal 8 and 9 release cycles.

mlncn’s picture

mlncn commented

Any tips or contrib hacks for how to do this until we get some movement here? Asking for a friend...

beunerd’s picture

beunerd commented

As said friend, I wanted to provide an example of how I went about accessing the paragraph entity that references a media entity that points to my image:

function template_preprocess_image_formatter(array &$variables){
  $media_entity = $variables['item']->getParent()->getEntity();
  $referencing_field = $media_entity->_referringItem->getParent();
  $parent_entity = $referencing_field->getParent();
}

Version: 8.9.x-dev » 9.1.x-dev

Drupal 8.9.0-beta1 was released on March 20, 2020. 8.9.x is the final, long-term support (LTS) minor release of Drupal 8, which means new developments and disruptive changes should now be targeted against the 9.1.x-dev branch. For more information see the Drupal 8 and 9 minor version schedule and the Allowed changes during the Drupal 8 and 9 release cycles.

Version: 9.1.x-dev » 9.2.x-dev

Drupal 9.1.0-alpha1 will be released the week of October 19, 2020, which means new developments and disruptive changes should now be targeted for the 9.2.x-dev branch. For more information see the Drupal 9 minor version schedule and the Allowed changes during the Drupal 9 release cycle.

hudri’s picture

hudri
Primary language German
Location Austria
commented

See https://drupal.stackexchange.com/questions/245610/preprocess-image-how-t... for work-arounds, mind the caching issues.

Version: 9.2.x-dev » 9.3.x-dev

Drupal 9.2.0-alpha1 will be released the week of May 3, 2021, which means new developments and disruptive changes should now be targeted for the 9.3.x-dev branch. For more information see the Drupal core minor version schedule and the Allowed changes during the Drupal core release cycle.

Version: 9.3.x-dev » 9.4.x-dev

Drupal 9.3.0-rc1 was released on November 26, 2021, which means new developments and disruptive changes should now be targeted for the 9.4.x-dev branch. For more information see the Drupal core minor version schedule and the Allowed changes during the Drupal core release cycle.

Version: 9.4.x-dev » 9.5.x-dev

Drupal 9.4.0-alpha1 was released on May 6, 2022, which means new developments and disruptive changes should now be targeted for the 9.5.x-dev branch. For more information see the Drupal core minor version schedule and the Allowed changes during the Drupal core release cycle.

berdir’s picture

berdir
Primary language German
Location Switzerland
commented

I'm not sure if it can be more reliable, that render caching doesn't consider it is IMHO important or you lose all benefit of render caching inner entities, could just as well disable that entirely as it will be different in each placement.

The shared link above shows one way to deal with that, disable it entirely. Note that view modes actually have a setting to do that, but ther is no UI for it. See \Drupal\Core\Entity\EntityViewBuilder::isViewModeCacheable(). Depending on the specific use case, it is also possible to add more context to the cache keys, for example if you have a limited set of variations (e.g. a checkbox or list field that you depend on) of your parent entities.

Note that I just created a related issue that deals with a tricky edge case of this property, but it only applies if you display the same entity multiple times on the same page: #3307335: $entity->_referringItem conflicts with rendering the same entity multiple times on the same page

wim leers’s picture

wim leers
Location Ghent 🇧🇪🇪🇺
commented
Related issues: +#3307335: $entity->_referringItem conflicts with rendering the same entity multiple times on the same page

that render caching doesn't consider it is IMHO important or you lose all benefit of render caching inner entities, could just as well disable that entirely as it will be different in each placement.

I'm afraid @Berdir is right (as usual!) 😬

Based on what I read here and the issue summary of #3307335: $entity->_referringItem conflicts with rendering the same entity multiple times on the same page, I'm wondering if we should close this issue in favor of that one?

berdir’s picture

berdir
Primary language German
Location Switzerland
commented

Not sure, it is a different thing, this issue is IMHO more a documentation request, but depending on what we do in my issue, it would involve properly documenting it which would also solve this, yes.

FWIW, another related topic is #2728419: Deprecate node/comment views-based theme suggestions and variables or the $entity->view property. There my proposal is to remove that feature as it's a broken out of the box feature that does not consider caching, while just having those properties does not have direct caching bugs, but you have to correctly use them.

Version: 9.5.x-dev » 10.1.x-dev

Drupal 9.5.0-beta2 and Drupal 10.0.0-beta2 were released on September 29, 2022, which means new developments and disruptive changes should now be targeted for the 10.1.x-dev branch. For more information see the Drupal core minor version schedule and the Allowed changes during the Drupal core release cycle.

Version: 10.1.x-dev » 11.x-dev

Drupal core is moving towards using a “main” branch. As an interim step, a new 11.x branch has been opened, as Drupal.org infrastructure cannot currently fully support a branch named main. New developments and disruptive changes should now be targeted for the 11.x branch, which currently accepts only minor-version allowed changes. For more information, see the Drupal core minor version schedule and the Allowed changes during the Drupal core release cycle.

Version: 11.x-dev » main

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