Beginning Drupal 8

Chapter 4 ■ Taxonomy
On the settings page, we have options to change the label we previously created, enter help text that
will be displayed on the content editing form beneath this field, set this field to Required (meaning the
author must select a value from the list before saving the article), and set a default value should the author
not select a value from the list. For the purposes of this demonstration, we’ll leave the Label as previously
set; enter a brief sentence instructing the author to select a value from the list if appropriate for this article;
leave the check box for the Required field unchecked so that it’s optional whether an author selects a type of
sport for any given article; and leave the default value for “Type of sport” set to None. In the reference type
leave the Reference method set to Default. The other option utilizes Views to customize the list of available
values, I’ll talk about Views in Chapter 10. In the list of Vocabularies select Type of Sport by clicking on the
checkbox. This instructs Drupal to only display items from the Type of Sport vocabulary when presenting
values to select from to the author. To complete the addition of the new field, click the “Save settings” button,
which will return you to the main admin page for the “Article” content type. By default taxonomy terms are
autocomplete fields, meaning that an author simply types a portion of the term they wish to add and Drupal
looks to see if a term matching that pattern exists. Autocomplete works well when the taxonomy terms are
known by the author, but in this case we want to present a list of terms for the author to select from. To
change the Type of sport field widget from autocomplete to a select list click on the Manage form display
tab at the to of the list of fields and change the value for List of sports from autocomplete to select list. After
changing the value click the Save button. Authors can now select from the list of terms in the “Type of sport”
vocabulary when authoring an article.
Selecting a Taxonomy Term when Creating Content
Based on our actions in the previous section, creating a new content item using the “Article” content type
will now present the author with a list of values that they can select from to categorize the content they are
authoring. To test this feature, click any of the “create content” links described previously. From the list of
content types listed, click the “Article” content type. When the Create Article page is displayed, notice that
there is a new “Type of sport” select list field where the author can select the type of sport to assign to this
content item (see Figure 4-8). Create a new Article by entering a title, body text, and selecting a type of sport
from the select list.
Figure 4-8. Creating an article
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