Entity Reference create problem with REST server using Services

Question

i'm building a web services and now i'm writing the documentation for the mobile developer.

When i want to create/modify an entity reference Services 3 ask a stucture like this

"field_organization": {
    "und":[{
        "target_id":"Organization name (69)"
    }]
  }

for a field like this

but, there is another way to give only the nid without the node title? It could be more handy.

I read something like

"field_organization":[{
     "target_id":{
                "target_id":"[nid:69]"
          }
   }]

or like

   "field_organization": {
       "und":[{
             "target_id":{
                 "target_id":"[nid:69]"
               }
           }]
     }

on the official documentation but it didn't work.

Can someone know a method to give only the nid of a Entity reference field?

Answer 1

I found the solution! The required data structure depends on the input widget, since Services uses the form submit handlers (which may be a major design flaw). For "Autocomplete/Tagging" the label (id) thingy is necessary. But if you switch to checkboxes it reads "field_reference": { 1:1, 2:2, ... ,nid:nid} and for select box "field_reference": [1,2,3 ... nid].

The REST-API depends on the widgets the frontend uses ... but at least it works. I guess its upside is that REST-posts are validated just as normal form inputs are. I'll also have a look at the approach implemented http://drupal.org/project/restws

Answer 2

I tried Philipp's way but no luck. In my case (widget type is select and services-7.x-3.3)

    "field_reference": {"und": "977"}

works. Where 977 is a nid.

Answer 3

I was using select list as a widget in order to get the service working but due to a big number of nodes being referenced in the entity reference field (~9000) I had timeout problems. I couldn't even open the edit node form.

So, I switched to the autocomplete field which loads way faster. To overcome the 'NAME (NID)' problem I realised that the NAME part doesn't have to be the correct one. Only the NID matters. So, sendind something like 'Dummyname (123)' with 123 being the nid of a node titled 'My node' will actually save the correct reference.

Answer 4

I had a similar problem using an entity reference field with the checkbox/radio-button widget. Ultimately, the issue in my particular scenario was that I was using the Field Group module to hide all administrative fields on a node type (using a form alter, set access to false for all fields within a specified field group). To get the services POST working correctly, I had to take the entity reference field out of the field group. The JSON that worked after that was:

{
 ...

 "field_entity_ref":{"und":"nid"}

 ...
}