"Authored by" field to be automatically filled

Question

On every creation of a node or edit of a node I need the "Authored by" field to be automatically populated with the username of anyone saving changes.

any ideas how I can do that?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Personally I think that a module like Rules (powerful and awesome as it is) is overkill for something relatively simple as this.

Looking at node_form(), I see that the author is set by populating the author field with the username. I would create a custom module which implements hook_form_BASE_FORM_ID_alter, and set the default value of the author name field to the name of the current user. That would look something like this (disclaimer: untested code!).

<?php

function MODULENAME_form_node_form_alter(&$form, &$form_state, $form_id) {
  // Always set the username to the current user. An empty string means anonymous.
  global $user;
  $form['author']['name']['#default_value'] = !empty($user->name) ? $user->name : '';
}

An advantage of this solution is that the field is populated in advance with a default value, allowing user with sufficient permissions (eg. administrators) to override the author as they always can. It would be harder to do that in a rules-based approach which only kicks in after the form has been submitted.

---

update:

The topic starter mentions in another answer that he ended up with the following code:

function module_name_form_alter(&$form, &$form_state, $form_id) {
  // Always set the username to the current user. An empty string means anonymous.
  global $user;
  if ($form_id == 'content_type_node_form') {
    $form['author']['name']['#default_value'] = $user->name;
  }
}

Some feedback on this code:

• Of course, the if-statement makes sense if you only need this behavior in certain cases. You could even place the global $user; inside the if.
• I would recommend that you keep the !empty($user->name) ? $user->name : '' part, instead of simply using $user->name. It may be an edge case, but as you can see in drupal_anonymous_user, the global $user object does not necessarily contain a 'name' property. If, at some point in the future, this form would become available for anonymous users, they will end up with php notices on their screen.

Answer 2

I'd use Rules to do this. You need to create a rule to respond to a node being updated, then add an action which sets the author value from the current user.

Answer 3

thanks a bunch, It worked well and I simply did this(just a few changes from what you've written)

function module_name_form_alter(&$form, &$form_state, $form_id) {
  // Always set the username to the current user. An empty string means anonymous.
  global $user;
  if($form_id=='content_type_node_form'){
    $form['author']['name']['#default_value'] = $user->name;
  }
}

Answer 4

If we want to implement this in any node form irrespective of Content type then we can use preg_match.

function change_author_form_alter (&$form, &$form_state, $form_id)
{

global $user;
// for all type of content node forms we can use preg_match
if (preg_match('/.*_node_form/',$form_id)) {
$form['author']['name']['#default_value'] = $user->name ;
}
}

Answer 5

This should just happen when created, if Author and Date information are ticked in admin/structure/types/manage/[your_content_type], under display settings.

If you want something else, you can use the token module and use a token as default value ; again in the content type settings.

If you want it updated with every save, you have to use hook_node_update() in a custom module, and set $node->uid to current user's ID (global $user; $user->uid).