Useful Drupal modules

d.o. page

Not recommended

For using typekit, google fonts etc.  But it's simpler to do web fonts manually in Twig templates/CSS.
D8 stable/mature - however it's confusing how you're meant to setup Typekit etc. and there are problems with uninstall it…  (there was an old D7 "typekit" module - deprecated).

28 Aug 2018: can't be uninstalled cleanly. The method described in #24 here works: https://www.drupal.org/project/fontyourface/issues/2916712#comment-12751073 if for example, you get an "The "font" entity type does not exist." message when running drush cr

d.o. page

"Essential"

For this to work for any content type after you activate it, you have to manually edit and save that content type's settings, otherwise the buttons will be missing.

d.o. page

Used to be called addressfield.  Adds one dependency - commerceguys/addressing.

This is a bundle of address fields, the correct combinations are shown depending on which country the user selects via a dropdown.
You can configure which countries are allowed per field instance.
To set the default, use the Manage Form Display tab.

It validates postcodes are in the correct format. 

Also supports 'zones' (groups of countries/subdivisions) for shipping/tax purposes.

d.o. page

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

d.o. page

"Essential"

D7 only (as this is in D8 core as standard).

Converts /admin/people into a fully-fledged configurable view (i.e. fields, filters, exposed filters, header/footer, pagination settings etc.) 

(Dependency: views_bulk_operations)

d.o. page

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.

d.o. page

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.

d.o. page

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

d.o. page

"Essential"

Control which text formats are available per field. (Often you'll want some fields to be simpler than others - e.g. you might want restrict everyone to a single format so they don't see a dropdown menu. 

You can hide the 'About text formats' link and the list of available HTML tags, again per field, in the Form Display tab using the widget icon.

d.o. page

"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.

d.o. page

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

d.o. page

"Essential"

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

d.o. page

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.

d.o. page

"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)

d.o. page

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

d.o. page

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.

d.o. page

"Essential"

My recommendation - safe to use but understand it's currently pretty limited due to bugs.

To activate, change a view's Exposed Form style (Advanced column) to 'Better exposed filters'.  

• Lets you enable AJAX auto submit. The difference is without BEF, with Use AJAX, an AJAX request (vs a full page reload) is made but ONLY when you click 'Apply'.  With BEF, as soon as you change a dropdown the view updates (like the filters on this site).  
• You can change the input method for each field (e.g.a single checkbox for what would otherwise be a True/False dropdown), make them "collapsible", add select all/select none links where appropriate.  
• Rewrite option that lets you reword all the options for the filter and also delete some.

Limitations:

• If you have a search field - e.g. Combine fields filter - you MUST turn on 'Exclude Textfield' if you are using 'Autosubmit'  
• Most of these options *aren't* available for taxonomies (e.g. webform where  
• If you use the default views single or grouped exposed filters, with selects/radios, they work correctly, but when you change them to BEF style, with checkboxes and AJAX, they don't (form is submitted and the checkbox has disappeared)
• Bug: reset button doesn't use AJAX, it sends you to a view URL instead (disable it in settings)

So all you can really do with BEF at the moment is use the AJAX setting.

Documentation 

d.o. page

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.

d.o. page

"Essential"

Framework for using (many) different types of captchas on forms such as user_registration.
e.g. try 'reCAPTCHA' which is Google's "I am not a robot" captcha.  Personal experience is that's much better at preventing spam than the standard "image" one.

Tested with D7.

d.o. page

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.

d.o. page

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.

d.o. page

Makes CKEditor fields respect the "rows" setting of the fields. (Has to be converted to pixels - there's a global setting, configured via a pixel factor and offset.)

d.o. page

"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) 

d.o. page

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

d.o. page

"Essential"

Keyboard shortcuts. A bit like Spotlight/Alfred/Launchbar.

Alt+D to launch (memonic: alt + D = coffee!)

Handy as it doesn't clash with browser keyboard-shortcut extensions such as Vimium.

Tips:

• April 2020: 8.x-.10 released, means you no longer need this patch to fix CSS colours
• remember that you can/should add your own menus to the search index

d.o. page

"Essential"

Allows users to receive emails for replies to their comments (or optionally for all comments on a node).  Can be toggled by content type (although not by comment type, if you have more than one comment entity).  In permissions, you can also control which roles can subscribe.  Can also set it so the author of a node also automatically gets emailed for every comment.

I'm using three patches:

• User without Subscribe to comment notifications sees setting in profile (authored by me)
• False positive notifications with multiple comment types (authored by me)
• Notifications not sent when user chooses 'Replies to my comment'

I also have a site which uses two comment types; I wrote a patch to turn off the notification checkbox for one of them.

d.o. page

Add a field whose value is calculated using raw PHP; specifically $value = 'foo';

(The recommendation is you write your PHP in a module of your own, and then call that method from the UI - for security and version control reasons).

Note: value is only calculated when nodes are saved (i.e. will initially be empty for existing content).

D8 status; alpha but working.

d.o. page

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

d.o. page

"Essential"

Selectively ignore configuration entries during an import - e.g. site settings / the system.maintenance message.

d.o. page

"Essential"

Displays a message on config pages indicating which config settings have been override by settings.  
There's a config setting where you can hide the actual values (so you can hide API key - you need to use config editor to edit that, there's no admin page)

d.o. page

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.

d.o. page

You also need to enable config_update_ui, which adds an 'Updates report' tab to Config Sync (/admin/config/development/configuration/report)

d.o. page

"Essential"

Store all contact form messages in the database (as an entity), rather than just emailing them.

Integrates with views, if you want a view of messages.

Messages are accessible (can be edited or deleted) at /admin/structure/contact/messages.

(May be useful considering From: address SPF/DMARC problem with contact forms, i.e. there may be cases where some emails aren't delivered.)

d.o. page

"Essential"

Set permissions by content type (with the option of overriding node by node)

d.o. page

"Essential"

If you only need a small amount of CSS, or want users to be able to directly edit it through the admin UI rather than creating a theme or module.

Caveat: doesn't work for admin themes (at least on D7)

d.o. page

"Essential"

The default button text for 'unlimited' fields where you can add multiple items is "Add another item".

You might want to change this.

This module lets you do it per field bundle - there are a couple of text options (for add and remove) added to the field edit screen.

NB: this is not the 'Save and add another' button for an entire content type, just the one that handles the javascript for individual fields with multiple entries.

d.o. page

Adds options should as choice of target, title, class ID etc. to the link dialog in CKEditor.

Needs configuring after install.

d.o. page

"Essential"

Now in core, but you need to enable it.

Adds an 'all-day' option.

d.o. page

"Essential"

Key features:

• Kint (enable kint submodule, for pretty variable printing, way to view properties and methods)
• DevelMailLog (redirect all mail to text files instead, specify location directory, specify filenames using tokens for recipient, subject, timestamp) - DevelMailLog requires that you also install the MailSystem module to activate it
• Config Editor and State Editor (enable via /admin/config/development/devel/toolbar)

d.o. page

"Essential"

Store a pair of fields together (numbers and text, boolean, email, telephone, Url).  As normal you can specify the quantity of double fields per entity, or allow an unlimited number.

Note: D7 version doesn't support 'date'.

Don't use it for:

• links - you might have one field for the URL and one for the description, but the display widget won't let you merge them into a clickable link.  That's what the dedicated link field type is for.

d.o. page

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

d.o. page

Lets you insert any entity type (supposedly) via the WYSIWYG editor, and like images you can set alignment etc.  It creates a toolbar button that can be added to the toolbar configuration in 'Text formats and editors'.  The strings needed can be pretty long - e.g. 

<drupal-entity data-embed-button="snippet" data-entity-embed-display="entity_reference:entity_reference_entity_id" data-entity-type="snippet" data-entity-uuid="216914ab-1bc2-4a73-975b-dc1de79e849a"></drupal-entity>
 

d.o. page

Build a custom list of nodes. The setup is via Admin > Structure. Currently D8 alpha.

d.o. page

"Essential"

Change the colour of the admin menu according to whether you're using dev, staging, production etc.

(You can also add 'switcher' menu links, e.g. Open in dev, Open in Prod). 

Notes:

- need to reset the cache after you've made changes [#2406619]

d.o. page

There are situations where you will want to hide a node title - e.g. if you have a view and insert an image field that's an entity reference to another content type.  Module allows you to hide titles by content type or view mode and for all nodes or just a custom selection.  Beta in D8.

d.o. page

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.

d.o. page

"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.

d.o. page

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.

d.o. page

(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.

d.o. page

"Essential"

Add group' button to /admin/config/people/accounts/form-display (or any other form), can then group fields inside fieldset/other HTML wrappers.  

• Bug and workaround: https://drupal.org/project/field_group/issues/3064890
• Also, field groups sometimes have the wrong default tab - my bug report (patch now committed to dev)

Types of groups:

• Fieldsets
• Horizontal tabs
• Vertical tabs
• Details
• Accordions
• Divs
• HTML elements

In theory can use this to add <div>s with css styles such as flexbox, like webform uses, but CSS to support that needs to be present on the page.