How do I hide the title when creating/editing a specific type of content?

Question

Here's what we'd like to do when create/edit node of specific type of content (we have 2 specific types, let's call them "type A" and "type B"):

• hide the title (= the user can change all fields but not the title)
• show a combo box to choose an item (lot of items, and this field is a long name)
• depending on the type of the content, when validating the node, update the title like this: title = name of the item + " - " + type of the content

Example:

User creates a node of "type B". He chooses the item called "The item XYZ long name" and validates => the title of the node is auto-magically created: The item XYZ long name - Type B.

Any idea how to do this (I don't know how to hide the title when creating/editing a node as well)?

Answer 1

A great module you can use is Auto NodeTitle :

"auto_nodetitle" is a small and efficient module that allows hiding of the content title field in the form. To prevent empty content title fields one can configure it to generate the title by a given pattern.

When the token module is installed it's possible to use various node data for the auto generated title - e.g. use the text of a CCK field (since 5.x).

Advanced users can also provide some PHP code, that is used for automatically generating an appropriate title.