Useful Drupal modules

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"Essential"

As of Sep 2018, up to alpha3 in D8 (but not personally tested).

Lets you import CSV/RSS etc.  files and various other formats and map them to nodes/user/taxonomy terms, either one-off or periodically.

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Integrates with Amazon Echo. Allows Drupal to respond to Alexa skills requests.  See Dries' blog with video demo.

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Allows you to group a set of fields together.  In active development for D8 but still a lot of open bugs at time of writing - project page says it will likely be replaced by Paragraphs.

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Only loads the parts of page that change when navigating between pages.

Unclear if still being maintained (no updates since Sep 2016) - part of the issue is it requires a core patch.

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Adds a trash bin for all content, so you may later restore (or permanently delete) it.  Depends on Content Moderation module.  Alpha in D8.

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I've not actually used this but I adapted it's code to enforce a configuration setting (I wanted to remove the HTML dom elements that are shown in the status bar).

The module allows you to supply your configuration using the UI.

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Tto actually export node content. An 8.x version has begun development:

composer require 'drupal/node_export:1.x-dev'

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Text filters, array and date manipulation.

(haven't tried this yet)

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Can specify single IP address or ranges. Two modes: restrict login, so they can only login from certain IPs, and restrict role, so they can login from anywhere but only access a role's permissions from the defined IPs. There's a D8 dev branch, last updated June 2016.

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This is a way of visualising - via grids of ticks and crosses - which roles have access to different operations on different entities.

Introductory blog post

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Alternative to the Organic Groups module. Allows you to create groups - e.g. classes, subscriptions, multiple communities.  Drupal module of the week post. Blog post.  It is by all accounts solidly written, but I found the initial UI confusing (in a "so what do I do now?" way) - you probably need to watch the YouTube video to understand it.

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Not recommended

Update: most people are now moving away from features. There is a Configuration Management initiative under discussion in Drupal 8.

Package up selected configuration for "features" (e.g. a blog or a photo gallery etc.) for reuse on other sites.  Not the same as the new D8 Config sync, which is for exchanging configs between different environments of the same site and requires a cloned DB sharing the same UUIDs.

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An implementation of  OAuth 2.0 Authorization Framework RFC - based on a PHP League package.

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Nice, clean, SVG sharing buttons. Project page says it's specifically optimised for Drupal.

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Autofocuses the first field of form (forms can be specified).  No sign of a D8 port.

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Images are hidden until they scroll into view.  Can specify distance before loading is triggered, also placeholder image, loading GIF and any pages to be excluded.  There's been some Drupal 8 development but unclear how complete it is.

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Saves snapshot of content type form using AJAX.  Content types and save frequency can be configured.  No sign of a D8 port yet.

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You can hide a node's title field (for reference, every node has to have a title) and generate it automatically, similar to pathauto.  No-one's porting this to D8 yet.

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"Essential"

Now in core, but you need to enable it.

Adds an 'all-day' option.

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Adds Twig syntax to insert views, view results, regions, entities (e.g. nodes, blocks, webforms), menus, images, image styles, tokens, breadcrumbs, messages, contextual links and more.

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Deprecated

Not recommended

DO NOT USE - security issue and Acquia will no longer support or maintain it.

Spam filtering SaaS from Acquia. Free for up to 50 "ham" messages a day.  Scans message then provides a captcha if appropriate, scores each message for reputation, spam etc.  I never tried this module and anecdotally I've seen mixed reports / people suggesting it's not all that good.

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Checks your code against Drupal coding standards.

No need to install this - isn't actually a module, it's a set of phpcs rules installed as standard in /vendor/drupal/coder/coder_sniffer

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Rather than change visibility for individual blocks, you can group them together and assign complex visibility settings to all of them. Module page promotes it as a simpler alternative to Panels.

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Protect against brute-force login attacks. Unclear what's happening with porting of this.

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Hours/minutes/seconds field type (formats: h:mm, h:mm:ss, m:ss, h, m or s). Drupal 8 in beta.

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"Essential"

install tfa and ga_login (TFA is just a framework, it doesn't come with it's own login plugins.)

Use this patch I wrote - it adds display of validation skip times and an admin reset button for users who are got locked out.

My installation instructions:

Next you need to generate an encryption profile.
First you need to generate a key - key type needs to be Encryption (not Authentication).
A 128bit key = 128/8 bytes = 16 characters - so generate a random 16 character string.

Set key provider to File rather than Configuration, this means the key won't end up in your version control.

Tick the 'strip trailing line breaks' box to avoid the "The selected key size does not match the actual size of the key." error

Key path should be relative to Drupal so the config will work on multiple sites
e.g. if you have created a file called /app/tfa.key on a lando container, set the key path to ../tfa.key
I'm actually creating mine in a keys directory.

Remember to save the key somewhere in your password manager, or your ansible variables, in case you lose the files later.
Remember to add /keys to your .gitignore file, so it won't get stored in version control.
Remember to copy it manually onto your production server.

In the TFA settings (/admin/config/people/tfa) you probably want to increase the number of times a user can skip validation.

Note that TFA has a separate 'Tfa user login' block (replacing the ordinary 'User login') 

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Not recommended

Not very actively maintained and it can be quite buggy.

Needs this patch:

Reply button can be pressed multiple times, resulting in multiple comment forms

I abandoned it for a project because the admin XHR response when you submit comments sends back comments you've already filtered out (I had written code to restrict visibility of certain comments).   Also had a problem where the initial comment form was left in place rather than being replaced, so you ended up with duplicates.

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"Essential"

Removes the 'Username' field from registration form.  Use in conjunction with a module that allows users to login with their email address.
Generates a username in the background (Drupal still requires one) - adds 'Patterns' tab to Account settings for configuring the name.

Patches:

• Module does not load pattern from configuration (ignore my confused posts on this issue, just use patch #3)
• (The 'Incorrect callback given to token replacement patch in issue #2918391 is no longer needed)

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Benefits:

• Build layouts using GUI - arrange fields in columns/blocks (or add a block, or menu, or tag cloud, user info etc.) 
• Easily override layout of individual nodes without needing to clone/design/apply a template (and reset to default easily afterwards)

Status:

Nov 2018: core, experimental in 8.6.x
May 1 2019: due for stable release in 8.7.0

Issue queue

Installation:

• Enable the layout_builder module (which also enables layout_discovery)
• Clear cache.

• Activation:  Content type -> Manage Display -> scroll down to Layout Options - tick Use Layout builder

By turning on Layout Builder, you switch from the standard Manage Display view (field, label, format/widget settings) and the layout builder GUI.

Resources:

• Explanation by Dries of key features
• OS Training tutorial
• Layout initiative

Compatibility:

• A migration path is being built for Panels / Panelizer.
• Undecided (Nov 2018) how Layout builder will work in conjunction with Paragraphs

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"Essential"

Self-explanatory.

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Provides extra options for aggregating data in tables - e.g. grouping sets of rows together and summing the values of particular fields.

Has a hook - hook_views_aggregation_functions_info() - which lets you add your own options to the table aggregation settings - e.g.  supposing you have a limit for something (number of tickets, nights of accommodation) and want to decrement it - you can write a method to sum the matching rows and then do a calculation on the total.

Also supports 'add column function' - adds a grand total (or other summary field) at the very bottom of the table.

Caution - this module breaks hook_views_pre_render() - you can write your own pre_render method to remove or shuffle entire rows, but any chances to values will be overwritten (discovered this by looking through the source and looking for the use of that hook).  The workaround is to try and do what you need to by using hook_views_aggregation_functions_info() instead.

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Lock all configuration changes via the admin UI - e.g. if you need to lockdown a production environment.

config_readonly now has a whitelist, added via an array in settings.php.

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Not recommended

There are still quite a few bugs open. I dropped this for a project, partly because it adds a load of clutter with the 'resets' and reset dates.
The minimum password policy in Drupal is already 12 characters anyway (and one issue is changing the minimum length doesn't change the help text.) 
You need to enable the submodules to use the various constraints:
drush pm:list | grep 'password_policy_'
Admin users see password policy stuff on the user profile page.
You need to set password reset days to 0 if you don't want to enforce a reset policy.
Policies can be applied by role.  
You get a generic warning about the password 'not matching the password policy'. Suggest using string overrides to change the "To change the current user password, enter the new password in both fields." message users see.
Instructions: add/edit the policy, click next, choose constraint then click 'Configure constraint settings' otherwise you won't be able to change anything.
It also lets you do a forced reset by role.

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"Essential"

Hide entity labels (i.e. titles) or auto-generate them. (Works for anything - nodes, comments, taxonomies).

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(based on ffc which hasn't been ported to D8).  

Allows you to configure field display based on value.  Adds a 'Conditions' pane to the cog in Manager Display of all entities (so content types but also comment types, e.g. if you have comments with multiple fields)

Requires Display Suite (ds)

Note: if you wanted to hide say a checkbox when it's value is false - you can do in it core with Manage Display - turn the label off then set (via cog wheel) the output format to Custom, and you can enter a value for true and leave false blank - exactly the same widget for boolean values you use when setting the output of a field in a view.

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"Essential"

This module lets you add fields from submissions to view, and sort/filter the view on them, in the same way you would standard fields from the Field API.

It's still alpha and not as polished/robust as the webform module itself - but it's certainly OK to use in production provided you test things first - check every combination of exposed filters works, and double check you aren't seeing duplicate rows (right now I've locked it to a recent commit on the dev-5.x branch, which doesn't need any patches).

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"Essential"

Assign various pages (by content type, URL, role etc.) to certain menu entries - so the 'active' status of the menu is set correctly (i.e. they appear within the sections you want).

- patch: Add enabled checkbox to edit form + enable new rules by default

As of alpha2 - views with contextual filters (e.g. myview/somefilter) will work correctly when a rule is added with pages / pages with wildcards specified.

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Adds a 'Manage dependencies' tab to the admin page for content types.

This lets you set a 'target field' whose visibility is set according to a 'control field' and whether the latter is full/empty/checked/unchecked/has a specific value.

Another useful feature is you can prefill/pre-tick etc. the target field (including with a custom text value, for example).

To detect quickly if it's in use anywhere (I needed to do this before being sure I could uninstall the module on a site), export your site config and grep the /config/sync directory for 'conditional_fields' - it's stored in the 'third_party_settings' key in core.entity_form_display.node.[content type].default.yml

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Telephone number field type.  This is in core, but you need to enable it.

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"Essential"

Control editing/visibility of individual fields by role.  

As well as custom settings ('create own', 'edit own', 'view own', 'edit any' and 'view any' - all per role), there's a Private setting which gives access to the author and administrator only. 

These are automatically applied to views.

Finding the setting: Look for  Field visibility and permissions – on the Edit tab, NOT Field Settings.

In /admin/people/permissions there's also a Access other users private fields permission.

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Way to embed lots of objects in twig. note you have to selectively enable various sub modules for each of the commands.  Seems pretty actively developed and well documented.

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"Essential"

Virus check files uploaded by users.

In Drupal - when it can't connect you get an error on the Status Report.
The status report also shows you the version which includes the virus signature info.
As soon as it can that error goes away.

There's a "verbose" option in the config settings (which logs files that "passed" the virus check as well as failed)

You need to tick 'Enable ClamAV integration' before it will actually scan any files.

Test it's working by creating a small file with the short Eicar test signature string

Notes: ClamAV does use a fair bit of memory (because it keeps a copy of all the virus signatures)

Also sensible to run a Nagios NRPE check to ensure ClamAV is always running.

Patch:

Requires core patch to avoid possible data loss (race condition) - use my rerolled patch (#35) 

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Add tokens, such as a user ID, to text or URL paths of menu items. 

Be wary of this issue: Current-user:uid not correct

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Adds word/character/paragraph count to the CKEditor status bar (can optionally enforce a word/character limit)

Configured via Text formats and Editors (/admin/config/content/formats).

Requires the ckeditor wordcount library - example composer.json for that (put this in your 'repositories' section):

        "ckeditor.wordcount": {
            "type": "package",
            "package": {
                "name": "ckeditor/wordcount",
                "version": "1.17.4",
                "type": "drupal-library",
                "extra": {
                    "installer-name": "wordcount"
                },
                "dist": {
                    "url": "https://download.ckeditor.com/wordcount/releases/wordcount_1.17.4.zip",
                    "type": "zip"
                },
                "require": {
                    "composer/installers": "~1.0"
                }
            }
        },

and then require:

"ckeditor/wordcount": "1.17.4",

Patch needed:

https://www.drupal.org/files/issues/2018-12-06/ckwordcount_plugin_path_2850845-9.patch

(to ensure modules gives browser correct path of plugin.js - if your ckeditor input disappears, check console.log and it's probably that)

The notification module is a dependency.

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"Essential"

Add a save and edit button

• Needed(?) patchto ignore the ?destination=querystring on admin page. 
• Integrated dropbutton doesn't seem to style correctly, turn this off.

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"Essential"

This is a formatter, available on node display or in views.

It turns a uploaded file or an external URL into an HTML5 audio player. Also supports various other JS player libraries which you can download. You can turn lazy-loading of the file on or off.

Note: there is a default label added below the player, which is either the URL field description or actual address, if the former is missing. Override the audioplayer.html.twig template to remove this.

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Provides a block with a tag cloud of chosen taxonomy term. Works but a bit buggy, e.g. UI taxonomy setting reverts to 'tags'.  Requires clearing the cache to update (including changing any settings).  Choice of numbers after each tag to indicate quality, or 'wordcloud' style with varying sizes (will need you to modify your CSS to add some spacing between words). 

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Not recommended

I would avoid this.  The idea is you enter URL paths with wildcards and override the cache expiration.  I was unable to get it to work properly for pages (settings on config under Development > Performance) Also, re: caching images, those are files being served directly by Apache or Nginx, not via the Drupal front-controller, so caching settings need to be configured there.

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"Essential"

For Views that use Table format. Adds a row underneath each record - you change the format from 'table' to the 'secondary row' option, you get an extra select dropdown in the table *settings*, and you can also specify colspan.  This does mean the label will be missing by default (you won't have a column header any more) - so you need to edit the field and tick rewrite output, and then specify your desired label, followed by the field value in Twig.
 

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There's a D8 version but I've only tested D7.

It's a filter that fixes incorrect paths in your content - e.g. if you have content with an old domain or IP address specified, you can redirect it.