dynamically fill a field with the value of a field in another node referenced with an entity reference field

Question

Referencing entities is a great capability of Drupal but gives me headaches.

I have three content types: Client, Contact and Job ticket.

Clients are companies with whom I conduct business. Contacts are contact persons within these companies. The Contact content type has a reference field referencing their company's node. Job tickets are tickets for jobs these companies hire me to do for them. In this content type I have two reference fields: one for the Client and one for the Contact.

This is my problem: In the Job Ticket I have a select list field that needs to be populated with the address (or addresses, since there can be multiple values for the Address field in the Client content type) of the client when I select the client in the reference field select list. How can I do this automatically.

I tried the Field Reference module but I can't get it to work, and it would give me ALL the addresses from ALL the client nodes. I only need the one(s) from the previously selected client.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You don't state much about your setup, so I am gonna presume you are using drupal 7. In that case I highly recommend using entityreferences. It replaces the former nodereference and userreference modules IMO. You can reference any entity with it. Also your custom CTs (Client, Contact, Job.)

When you create a reference field you have to option to use a 'simple' selection which indeed gives you ALL content of a certain type. But you can also choose to use a custom made view for the selection.

Using a contextual filter (which you can pass along in the entityreference field settings) you can filter the view down to exactly what you want. It's brilliant, try it!