Populate url field for nodes created with Devel Generate

Here's the patch

OK. I've done some searching and found in file devel_generate.fields.inc the function devel_generate_fields which looks like it should be the one you are talking about. However, on running debug in this, the field 'url' is not returned in the field instances. For the weblinks node type we only get taxonomy_weblinks and body.

function devel_generate_fields(&$object, $obj_type, $bundle) {
  dd('-- devel_generate_fields --');
  dd($object, '$object');
  //dd($obj_type, '$obj_type'); // 'node'
  dd($bundle, '$bundle');
  $field_types = field_info_field_types();
  //dd($field_types, '$field_types');
  $instances = field_info_instances($obj_type, $bundle); // url is not here.
...

Later in this function we would execute module_load_include('inc', $module, "$module.devel_generate"); but only if we found a field defined by weblinks (which we don't)

In file devel_generate.inc, function devel_generate_content_add_node(&$results) there is a comment:

  // A flag to let hook_node_insert() implementations know that this is a
  // generated node.
  $node->devel_generate = $results;

which implies that we can use this to do things in our own hook_node_presave().

I suppose we should try to do it with the proper include file if possible, but I'm not sure that we can, as our 'url' is not a field as defined in real Drupal terminology, we store it ourselves in our own table. The various field_info functions are not aware of it, but maybe we can make them aware?

Yes, but as far as I know, making url a full field would involve quite a bit of rework in the Weblinks code. Is that actually on our plan of things to do for 7.x-1.0?

One option would be to use the patch as supplied, but I will also add a note referring to this thread and saying to re-write with the specific devel_generate hook if/when we change the url to a real field. That way, we get the benefit now of a properly populated url for our testing, but we do not lose sight of the fact that there is another way to do it.

There is a nice discussion on whether to convert url to a field in #1197770: Roadmap reminder
Here is a patch with the extra comments.

Thanks for testing.

The same functionality is useful in 6.x too. Anything that saves us time and effort when testing/debugging is worth porting back.

The code addition is identical, but it goes in weblinks_nodeapi op=presave, instead of weblinks_node_presave.

Great! Thanks for testing.

The issue is fixed. Old patch from #13 got requeued, and obviously it fails to apply because the code change is already committed in #15.