I learn best when I have a problem to solve, and with one of our D8 upgrade projects, we had a mess to clean up in the menu system. This provided an excellent oppportunity to get hands-on in Drupal core, learning some of the major differences from earlier versions, and three things in particular:
- How easy it is to use Drupal Console to create your own tools
- How much the menu system has changed
- How to load and save just about any entity
The problem
It seemed like an easy one: links on the menu were going to internal “node” paths instead of the aliased “friendly URL”. For example, a link on a submenu went to “/node/494” instead of “/about/accreditation”. In this particular project, there were several hundred links that got mangled in this way.
I’m not exactly sure how this happened, but it has something to do with starting the migration in Drupal 8.0, updating the migration to work with 8.1, and going back to clean up all the friendly URLs. Somewhere along the way, the menu system ended up with links to the node/[nid] path, and not the friendly URLs, even though the pages themselves worked fine with the URL aliases.
The Redirect module was already set up, and configured to redirect to the alias — but this does not seem to work correctly yet.
Bulk operations were of no help — and worse, the menu and parent items on the menu link edit form on most of the links did not show up correctly, even though the menu itself showed links in the correct place.
Creating a repair tool using Drupal Console
In earlier versions of Drupal, we’ve created dozens of little helper scripts using Drush. It’s relatively easy to create a drush script to fix up data, set up integrations with other systems, diagnose issues, etc. Drush was our go-to tool for creating little helper tools.
In Drupal 8, Drupal Console has become a compelling alternative — mainly due to its built-in code generation. Drush is still an important part of our kit, but Drupal Console has quickly become an important complement.
And it turns out, one of the things you can generate in Drupal Console is a Drupal Console command. First, create a module (if you don’t want to add the command to an existing module):
john@katmai >git/test (develop)> drupal generate:module
Enter the new module name:
> Fix Menus
Enter the module machine name [fix_menus]:
>
Enter the module Path [/modules/custom]:
>
Enter module description [My Awesome Module]:
> Fix non-aliased menu link data
Enter package name [Custom]:
>
Enter Drupal Core version [8.x]:
>
Do you want to generate a .module file (yes/no) [yes]:
> no
Define module as feature (yes/no) [no]:
>
Do you want to add a composer.json file to your module (yes/no) [yes]:
> no
Would you like to add module dependencies (yes/no) [no]:
> no
Do you confirm generation? (yes/no) [yes]:
>
Generated or updated files
Site path: /home/john/git/test
1 - modules/custom/fix_menus/fix_menus.info.yml
john@katmai >git/test (develop)>
Next, generate your custom command:
john@katmai >git/test (develop)> drupal generate:command
Enter the module name [ctools]:
> fix_menus
Enter the Command name. [fix_menus:default]:
> fix_aliases
Enter the Command Class. (Must end with the word 'Command'). [DefaultCommand]:
> FixAliasesCommand
Is the command aware of the drupal site installation when executed?. (yes/no) [yes]:
>
Do you confirm generation? (yes/no) [yes]:
>
Generated or updated files
Site path: /home/john/git/test
1 - modules/custom/fix_menus/src/Command/FixAliasesCommand.php
john@katmai >git/test (develop)>
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