Entity display

An enhanced way to control the display of your entities in Drupal through code.

Classic method

The display of entities (node, user...) in Drupal is normally configured through the Manage display UI (/admin/structure/types/manage/*/display).

Problems

• Repetitive tasks - tedious process.
• Not real FE/BE separation.
• Needs an additional module (Features) to export and deploy changes and problems derived from its use:
• 1. Performance
  2. Increasing amount of modules
  3. Incomprehensible chunks of code
  4. ...
• Even editing directly exported code, it turns out into repeating code (DRY).

Solution

The entity display module solves all these problems:

• Define the display of entities by code using a familiar methodology (hooks):
• 1. Forget the slow UI Manage display form.
  2. Get rid of the "Features" module to export the configuration.
  3. Clean the module cache and boom! Your display will be ready.
• Reuse your element display configurations (field formatter settings) across the site.
• Real BE/FE separation. Define what elements define your display in the theme.
• Flexible definitions: group them by entity type, view mode...

And more...

• Extra fields support
• Render arrays integration (cached elements)
• Performance boost

For further information check out this presentation.