Alter user's entity label method

Question

By default the label() method of the user entity returns the username. So everywhere on the website where user references are used, the username is displayed.

I need to alter this method so everywhere the user name is displayed it will use my custom function. So instead of "custom_user_name" will display "Firstname Lastname" for example.

Any idea on how to achieve this? Thanks.

Answer 1

I'm not sure if there's a shortcut for that, but if not the steps are still quite minimal:

1. Sub-class the \Drupal\user\Entity\User class in a custom module, and override its label() method:

   mymodule/src/Entity/User.php

   namespace Drupal\mymodule\Entity;
   
   use Drupal\user\Entity\User as CoreUser;
   
   class User extends CoreUser {
   
     public function label() {
       return 'something new';
     }
   
   }
   

2. Implement hook_entity_type_alter() to set the class for the User entity type:

   function MYMODULE_entity_type_alter(&$entity_types) {
     $entity_types['user']->setClass(\Drupal\mymodule\Entity\User::class);
   }
   

3. Rebuild the cache

Answer 2

The above example is not something you probably want to do, it may not work the way you want it to work. For example, default user listing will show you usernames with class override.

Also overriding the user class may not be even possible in some cases.

There is shortcut to edit the label with hook;

/**
 * Implements hook_user_format_name_alter().
 */
function MYMODULE_user_format_name_alter(&$name, \Drupal\Core\Session\AccountInterface $account) {
  $user = $account instanceof \Drupal\user\UserInterface ?
    $account :
    \Drupal::entityTypeManager()->getStorage('user')->load($account->id());
  $name = $user->get('my_field')->value;
}