Programmatically customise fields in node views

Question

I'm developing a module that exposes a node type (by the usual hook_node_info() and hook_install()) and a set of custom fields.

I would like to programmatically define what/how those fields have to be shown in the node views (at least "full"). For example: the field XYZ should be hidden in the "full" mode, and the field ABC should have the lable inline (I'm able to do this by UI, but I would like to define it programmatically).

In any case my need is to exactly modify the view mode (not to always hide a field), in order to allow users to modify the default visualisation way after installation, if necessary.

I can't figure what hook I have to implement, or what code I have to write in the hook_install.

Thank you for your help

Answer 1

I want to share the solution I found, in order to help future readers.

In Drupal 7 the concept of "formatter" helpt to control the output of a field. For example this tutorial allow you to programmatically define a custom formatter for a given field.

Then by UI site admins (by admin/structure/types/manage/<nodetype-name>/display) are able to chose that formatter (or others) for any specific field.

If you want to declare a default formatter for a field, the best way seems to be while the install phase of the module. In that moment (At least in my case and in all tutorial I found on the Internet) you use a field_create_instance method to add a specific instance of a given field. According to the official documentation, you can also add the display options that exactly allow you to define the formatter to be used for a specific display (or the formatters if want to declare for more than one display).