Creating multigroup widgets in Drupal 7

When the multigroup module was introduced as part of the CCK 3.x dev branch in 2009, it took CCK to a whole new level. It allowed people to easily create their own multi-value, multi-field widgets. Currently it is still only available as an alpha release for Drupal 6 though, most likely to focus more on Fields for Drupal 7 and to allow an easier upgrade path from Drupal 6 CCK 2 to Drupal 7 Fields. More information about this decision can be found on the drupal.org issue about the Status of CCK3 and plans for D7

In Drupal 7, the core Fields module doesn't offer the option to create groups, let alone multigroups. To create simple groups, you need the Field group module. It's much more powerful than its predecessor in that it allows you to not only create fieldsets, but also vertical and horizontal tabs and accordion groups.

Field group configuration

The Field group module does not cover any multigroup functionality however, and it never will. It states so on the module's project page, and more information can be found in the issue queue.

Luckily there's the Field collection module which uses the Entity API to create multi-value, multi-field widgets. The Field collection table module adds a table formatter to the collections, and Field collection also integrates with Field group to offer amazing flexibility and power. As an added bonus, both modules integrate flawlessly with Features. At this time, there is no upgrade path from D6 Multigroup to D7 Fields with Field collection though.

Comments

Can I be so frank to toot my

Can I be so frank to toot my own horn a little here :)

If you are interessed in creating more then one multigroup on
a page, you might be interessed in my entity based recreation of the old flexifields. Current state is that it is most of it is working and available as drupal.org sandbox project. The main advantage is that you can embed multiple flexinodes into host entity, shuffle them around etc.

See my introduction blogpost : http://renebakx.nl/65/sneak-peak-into-flexifields-for-drupal-7/#more-65

Hi Rene, Thanks a lot for

Hi Rene,

Thanks a lot for bringing up Flexifield! I didn't know it was on its way to Drupal 7, and the many to many relation has definitely got my attention. I'm looking forward to see where this is going.

Best regards,
Wim

Your welcome, the more people

Your welcome, the more people know about flexinodes the better :)

For me, I hope to get into a full blown drupal.org project, because I strongly believe that the M2M character of flexinodes is a worthy addition to have when using drupal as a CMS framework.

At my current employer we use them to make it easier for content managers to add flexible content-blocks to page nodes in one edit screen instead of using panels/context etc.

But I must say, that I do not have plans on a upgrade path either, it is doable, but I don't many people would choose to upgrade from flexifields into flexinodes so I rather spend time in integrating display-suite because I do believe that having support for DS certainly would help getting the flexinodes concept more into a site builders workflow. I think even more then having support for views, since a flexinode is almost 100% dependent on it's host.

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