In Drupal 7, hook_page_alter was a convenient way to go when we needed to modify page elements that were added by other modules. Drupal 8 does away with this hook - hopefully for the better. To fill the void created by hook_page_alter’s dismissal, the following hooks have been introduced.
In the previous post, we discussed how to write a style plugin for Views in Drupal 8. In this post, we will see how to allow the user to configure our style plugin.
We had previously created a class named CardsStyle for the plugin. In order to add configuration options, we will need to extend that class with two new method: buildOptionsForm and defineOptions as follows.
Drupal 8 is just around the corner, and it has reached an important milestone: beta-to-beta updates will be provided for each beta release going forward. That gives me some confidence that no major re-works are to be expected if I start building with Drupal 8. That said, we are still facing a sizable documentation gap regarding the changes in the API. My first encounter with this problem was when I was building a custom style plugin for Views.
In my previous post, we built a custom Panels plugin that shows a node status icon to indicate whether the node is published or unpublished. This time around, we will enhance that plugin by introducing a configuration form. For the sake of demonstration, we will add a setting that lets the user choose when they want the show the status icon: only when the node is unpublished, or always.
We often use Panels to build node page layouts, because it enables a vast range of options to show content in various sections of the page. In addition, you can develop a custom plugin for Panels, which brings ultimate flexibility. I took that route when I needed to display an icon next to the node’s title to indicate whether it is published or not.