Join forces with Corresponding Entity References

Hi chertzog

+1 on this!

First step would be to see which one is easier to migrate? Whichever we choose to deprecate, users need to have an update path.

I haven't used your port yet (I did use cnr in D6 a lot), I will have a look and let you know!

BTW, thanks for contacting me!

Cheers

I'm curious to know if there is any news about this. It seems to me that both modules have kinda stalled lately.

I'm in the process of picking on of these two and would be grateful to know more so picking the one with a future.

The UX/usability is much better in this module, see #1862124: Move the corresponding reference field setting to the field configuration (UX), while cer has the nice option to allow referencing the same entity type with just one field.

@chertzog: That's brilliant news. If its interesting I and the Drupal SBUI team would be more than happy to help out with UX and usability if that's interesting.

Hello, jumped in to let you all know that I'm also keeping an eye here. Same as @chertzog been overloaded with deadlines but module is alive.

Cheers

Hi @jm.federico, nice to hear your busy. Maybe not so good for us hoping for improvements in any of these two modules :)

Since you both are overloaded and the modules, besides what I mentioned in #3, is solving the same thing, it would be great if they could be merged into one project.

I have spent quite a bit of time testing them both and could write up a more detailed wish list from a sitebuilders point of view. I'm not a developer myself, but in Drupal SBUI we have a couple of guys that I might be able to talk into helping with contributing patches as well to help speed things up. But then we firstly need to have a decision about which one of the project that will remain active.

While having you both here I have two things I have been thinking of that we could use this thread to have a quick discussion about.

1 - I can foresee the need of having this functionality between entities that then also are packaged in two, or more, different Features. How will this then work when you enable the features one at the time. That is, when you enable the first one, the corresponding entit(y/ies) does not exist on the site yet.

For the site I am working on, this definitely is going to happen and I am quite sure it will be a common scenario for a lot of sites.

2 - One thing I loved about the Relation module is the ability to add fields to the relation/reference. Thus making it possible to for example have a text field with details about each individual reference. This is currently not possible with either of these modules, nor do I believe I can use for example The Field Collection or ECK modules to do this as that would be its own entity.

Making it fully fieldable would probably be quite a task as it is a field in itself. But offering an optional text field for each reference should be fairly easy to add as many other fields, Link for example, does similar. Option should be to to use the same text on both sides or be able to have different texts for each entity.

Sorry for the delay of getting back this. I have now been able to complete my proposal for merging these two modules as well as complementing it will an as complete specification of the feature set needed.

I have done that in a Google Docs document called - Merging Proposal Plan
Entity Cross Reference. Also see Entity Cross Reference (Task Force), which is the Drupal SBUI project we have used to work on this.

FYI: I opted to call it Entity Cross Reference to avoid taking side of the existing two projects.

Worth considering is also if this functionality should be included in the main Entity Reference module directly. In my view this is such an useful functionality that a large part of sites installing ER will also want this.

it would also allow us to make a UI redesign offering much better UX for sitebuilders.

FYI, I have updated the Google Docs document linked to in #8 with mockups for how the field configuration needs to be changed to for both one and two field cross referencing.

Just created #1901414: Cross Referencing (automatic back reference) to hear what the Entity Reference maintainers think of including this functionality in the main module.

Hello, tons of thanks for all the work you've pu into this.
I've read you doc and it makes sense to me, lets see what the developers of ER think.

As per the module name, I don't mind not using mine at all, in fact I don't like "ref_field" as the project name (it is there because it was initially a dup of ER) (although I have to confess I would drop a tear or too).
As per name suggestion, My only input would be to use something that starts with "Entity reference SOMETHING" to make it pretty obvious that it is a module that works with "Entity reference"

Thanks again

Have a great day!

Thanks @jm.federico, glad to hear you liked it, just wait until I've finished up the "Killer Feature" part too :)

Was there anything in there you found puzzling? I'm not really a Drupal code developer. Have lots of PHP/MySQL experience, but it is from some years back really.

Regarding name, unless the ER maintainer gives OK for inclusion in main module, I think "cer" feels like it make a little more sense, plus its short. Also works as Corresponding/Cross Entity Reference :). ref_field works too. However, me it reads as reference_field, which might be confused as having something to do with the references module.

FYI: I have now completed the GDoc with the missing parts. One concern about the drop-down option for reference type and also written the spec for the Killer Features. I am personally very excited about the multi-field cross referencing idea. It can really be something.

Feel free to use the comment feature in GDOcs if you find anything unclear or weird and I have a look at it.

What is the status of this plan?

Also interested, any news?