Drupal 8 Field API series part 2: field widgets

In the first article of the Drupal 8 Field API series, we saw how field formatters are written in Drupal 8. Now it's time for widgets. You might get a déjà vu when reading as a lot resemble to formatters.

Plugins

Creating field widgets in Drupal 7 was done by implementing four hooks. In Drupal 8, widgets are now plugins using the new Plugin API. Hooks are replaced by methods in classes, which means that your module file will be empty if you only provide a widget, unless you also implement one of the (new) widget alter hooks. Being classes, this means that field widgets can now extend on each other. A good example in core is the image field widget extending the file field widget class.

swentel
Mon, 08/05/2013 - 10:46