Displaying buttons by default (when added as fields without saving the entity)

Hi beauregard,

This is a matter of setting the default. Without saving the entity including the field (thus having no value), what should be displayed?
Currently no buttons are displayed, but it can be also the other way around.

Probably we should change this (so that buttons are displayed by default) or we include a setting for this.

Yes, I think I understood your issue. And as I said we should probably change the default behaviour.

The idea behind having a field for the buttons is that the editor can disable/enable buttons per entity/node. For just placing the buttons the block or the panels pane would be the better solution.

After thinking about this a little bit I would propose the following:

- Add a setting in the field formatter form where you can choose if the buttons should be displayed by default. I am not a big fan of adding more settings and complexity but this way we have backwards compatibility.

- For hiding the field to the editor I would be also possible to go with a permission, this way editing the field can be disabled or just activated for a special role. But I consider this as an extra feature request that requires still more thinking I guess. Not sure this is really needed, there is also the field_permissions module btw.

Adding a setting for displaying the buttons by default is definitely on my todo-list and would be the next task.

Here is a patch. Needs some feedback if it makes sense this way and the wording is accurate.

i think it would make more sense to show the buttons by default on all entities that have this field (without having to check another setting) since this is the most obvious reason of adding the field.

so if there is an additional option on field creation it should be "Hide buttons by default (also for existing entities)"

in that case here is the helptext i suggest to go along with the option:

Check this if you want to hide the share buttons on entities created previous to installing/enabling Shariff. If unchecked the share buttons will appear on all previously existing entities.

Since we have a defaultvalue checkbox to show/hide on a per entity basis it could also be a checkbox "apply default to all existing entities" which would allow changing the value on all existing entites back and forth flexibly (with notice that this will change even values which are overridden on entities).

thx for having a look on this.

i think it would make more sense to show the buttons by default on all entities that have this field (without having to check another setting) since this is the most obvious reason of adding the field.

Not sure about this because of backwards compatibility (this is also the main reason I created this setting): Introducing this behaviour would suddenly add buttons to nodes where they haven't been shown so far. If we change the default to show it everywhere we need to at least add this bold in the release notes.

Since we have a defaultvalue checkbox to show/hide on a per entity basis it could also be a checkbox "apply default to all existing entities" which would allow changing the value on all existing entites back and forth flexibly (with notice that this will change even values which are overridden on entities).

The button field's primary value is that editor can toggle the display. Then we would also need to hide the field in the node edit form. I think this is another issue.

release notes change notice sounds fine (and maybe even a postupgrade message?)

it does seem more sensible to me that the default (as in the setting that doesnt require me to check a checkbox) should be to show buttons. hiding buttons should happen optionally per entity. (as opposed to the other way around)

on second thought i believe we don`t even need to provide a way to apply the default setting (be it view or hide) to all existing entities since vbo can do that and so can rules.

not sure why you want to hide the field on the edit form but that is a different issue to be discussed there.

the patch looks good and worked as advertised during initial tests btw.

Thanks discopolo. Adopted the naming and help description and comitted this patch.
Not sure this is really needed though, for Drupal8 I would prefer to get rid of this setting and display buttons always by default.