Entity Base Type

Spawned from Drupal Core issue: #1042822.

I routinely need to handle entities and their fields in a generic manner. For some reason an entity object doesn't have a property to describe what kind of entity it actually (i.e.: node, user, comment).

This module is incredibly simple, it adds a property called base_type to a entity in hook_entity_load.

A common scenario is using field_get_items($entity_type, $entity, $field_name, $langcode = NULL) where it needs the $entity_type. If you're handling fields in a generic manner, you won't have access to the entity type.

Scenario problem:

    /* ... */
    field_get_items('?????', $entity, $field_name);

Example solution with Entity Base Type enabled:

    /* ... */
    field_get_items($entity->base_type, $entity, $field_name);

Why is the new property called "base_type" and not "entity_type"?
I didn't want to conflict with OG's similar situation where it adds "entity_type" to its objects.