Append an <i> tag to entity field view hook

Question

On a field of field type = LINK and widget = LINK, I want to add an tag on the rendered output.

The reason is to be able to add a class, not to the whole tag output, but to append a FontAwesome icon.

Hook_page_alter, of course shows all of the rendered HTML. I really don't want to mess with that.

I tried hook_entity_view_alter. That works in a clumsy fashion but two problems:

1) It only affects the output from the node displayed via a view 2) It appends the tag in new after the displayed link.

It appends the tag in new after the displayed link.

Answer 1

You can theme individual fields: https://api.drupal.org/api/drupal/modules!field!field.module/function/theme_field/7

You can either have a theme function in template.php or a tpl.php template file, the former is preferred for performance reasons.

Using a theme function you could do something like:

THEMENAME_field__link($vars) {
  $output = '';
  foreach ($vars['items'] as $delta => $item) {
    $link = l($item['#title'], $item['#href']);
    $output .= '<div class="' . $vars['classes'] . '"' . $vars['item_attributes'][$delta] . '>' . $link . '<i class="fa fa-download">&nbsp;</></div>';
  }
  return $output;
}

Though you'll have to check $vars for specifics. As for checking the widget I think you can get a clue from $vars['element']['#formatter']