Alter field settings using hook?

Question

EDIT: I need to alter the settings of an entity reference field for administrators only. I need to change from the settings in the first image, to the settings in the second image.

The reasoning is that normally when creating content, I want users to select from the options available in the view. The options in the view are the "Bands" (a content type) that each individual user has created. However, if an admin needs to moderate the content, they are not allowed to save it after editing because the content of the field is not an option available to the admin (i.e. the band entered by the original user, and currently saved to the entity reference field, is not a band created by the admin and is therefore not an option in the admin's array). On save by an admin, it fails to save and throws an error of "The referenced entity (node: XXX) is invalid", staying on the edit page.

I tried changing $form_state through hook_form_alter, but apparently $form_state settings aren't saved on submission. So, I tried adding the alters to a validation function, which also didn't work for me. Then, I found the settings within $context of hook_field_widget_properties_alter, but it seems that $context can only be referenced and not altered. I also came across this post, which seems to state that there isn't really a hook for altering field settings.

Unfortunately, I have realized that I really need this feature in order to moderate my site. As always, any help is incredibly appreciated, as this issue seems to be beyond my abilities.

Here's some screenshots as requested by Minty:

Casual user's options, populated by the view, include only their own bands

What I want in the admin's options, which should be all the bands authored by all users. (note that it currently shows all bands, because I figured out how to do contextual filter in the view based on the current user, not because I was able to alter the field settings as asked by the issue):

Without the above fix, only the admin's bands appear in the list when editing a node. Therefore, as stated in the issue, it throws an error that the previously saved band is not a valid option for the field, and the node cannot be saved.

Answer 1

With respect to your original post, I ran into this exact issue here in drupalsixlandia and resolved it with a dull ax inside of views. By exact meaning I wanted to have a select list of bands created by a user presented to them when they wanted to add an album, but when an admin went in to add/edit things, s/he should see all of the bands on the system.

So, I created a view and used this view to populate the band Node Reference field in the album type in CCK.

I called it my_band and it filters on published bands and returns the Node Title of the band as the field. It has one argument, or in D7 a contextual filter, User Uid and in action to take if argument not present I provide a default argument via PHP code:

global $user;

if (in_array('super user', array_values($user->roles))) {
  return -1;
} else {
  return $user->uid;
}

Then in the Validation of that argument, I again use PHP:

if ($argument == -1) {
  return FALSE;
} else {
  return TRUE;
}

with display all values if validation fails.

So, now what happens (here at least) is if a casual user wants to create an album, s/he is presented with a list of only the bands s/he has created. But, if any user with the super user role wants to create or edit an album, the validation is forced to fail, and the argument is ignored and all bands in the system are returned.

Perhaps with some D7ing of the code above this might work for you.

Answer 2

The $form_state variable will be processed when the form is validated, when the user-submitted values are inserted into the array. So any changes you add when the form is first being built won't be reflected once it's been validated/submitted.

The most common method I've seen to manipulate the $form_state is in a custom validation function, it might be worth giving that a try:

function entityreference_widget_form_alter(&$form, &$form_state, $form_id) {
  if($form_id ==  'review_node_form') {
    $form['#validate'][] = 'entityreference_widget_form_validate';
  }
}

function entityreference_widget_form_validate($form, &$form_state) {
  $form_state['field']['field_review_band']['und']['field']['settings']['handler'] = 'base';
  // etc...
}

Answer 3

From what I can tell, the problem seems to be that you're filtering the view for bands authored by the current user. Then, when the admin tries to submit an edit form with a band that s/he is not the author of, the form gives an error.

If this is accurate, maybe the best solution is not to manipulate this in the form but in the view. You could change the view logic to show a band if the current user is the author OR if the user is an admin. I'm pretty certain you can achieve this with the Views Or module. Your two criteria (author, admin) would need to both be checkable with a filter or both with an argument (you can't do 'argument OR filter'), but I think this is the case. I would then disable ('#disabled' => TRUE) the form element using a form_alter when an admin is viewing it, so that they can't set it to any band.

If not, another option is to use a Views hook to remove the author filter if the current user is an admin. This would achieve the same effect described above.

One thing to consider: which widget are you using for the band select? If it's anything other than autocomplete, this method may not be advisable because it would mean loading all the bands on the page as <select> options or whatever. If this a very large number of bands, it could seriously slow down your page.