When adding new nodes how can I pre-populate the body field with the body of another node?

Question

I have a Drupal 9 website with number of nodes that I use as templates, I clone them to create nodes with the same body text.

However, I want to make this process simpler by prepopulating the body field using a token that fetches the node ID from the URL parameter.

I checked the modules:

• Prepopulate
• Entity Prepopulate

but as far as I can see, they don't support fetching a field from another node? Entity Prepopulate comes close I'm not sure how the URL parameter can be used by a token to pre-populate the body field.

Answer 1

If you add the template node ID as URL query parameter

/node/add/product?template=123

this code adds the body content of the template:

mymodule.module:

use Drupal\node\Entity\Node;

/**
 * Implements hook_ENTITY_TYPE_create() for 'node'.
 */
function mymodule_node_create(Node $node) {
  if ($node->getType() == 'product') {
    if (\Drupal::routeMatch()->getRouteName() == 'node.add') {
      $nid = \Drupal::request()->query->get('template');
      if ($template = Node::load($nid)) {
        # add access check for $template if necessary
        $node->body->value = $template->body->value;
        $node->body->format = $template->body->format;
      }
    }
  }
}

If the node add form is accessible to untrusted users, you need to add an access check to identify the node as a template. Without a hacker could use the node add form to read unpublished content simply by guessing node IDs.

Answer 2

The Field clone module can do this without custom code: Example usage: node/add/page?fieldclone=node:17:body

This module adds an option to clone fields to entity create/edit pages via get parameters. After installation you can use links like this (should be self-explanatory): node/add/page?fieldclone=node:17:field_common|node:23:field_source:field_target