'Comments', 'Users', 'Taxonomy' are Entity Types because they each define their own sets of required fields.
I am having a discussion with my boss where I am arguing that 'Menu' are really just a type of 'Taxonomy'. This is because Taxonomy has a parent
field, and a title
, but Menu also shares this, and extends it to require a 'link' field. He, however, disagrees with me and says that there are things which Menus can do that Taxonomy cannot. But I don't see what.
- 'Menu' has the concept of hierarchy, so does 'Taxonomy'.
- 'Menu' has a 'link' field to link to a Node, or an external link. But this can also be done using 'Taxonomy', by manually adding in a 'link' field manually.
- You can control permissions on 'Menu' items, you can also do this with Taxonomy
I understand that a 'Menu' serves a special and common need, but conceptually I think it's just a type / superset of taxonomy, not another Entity. I think this chain of thought is common, as reflected by the number of sites that uses the Taxonomy Menu module.
In a previous questionprevious question, I grok that Comments and Nodes are different Entities because they have completely different fields. But here, Menu seems to have the same fields as Taxonomy - namely parent
and title
.
So, why has the Drupal community decided that Menu need to be its own Entity Type, instead of a being just a module that extends taxonomy? (i.e. Taxonomy Menu) What does Menu offer that you cannot achieve in Taxonomy?