This tutorial aims at covering the conception and development of a custom eZ Publish 5 FieldType.
We will do this by implementing a Tweet Field Type. It will:
accept as input the URL of a tweet (https://twitter.com/<username>/status/<id>)
fetch the tweet using the twitter oEmbed API (https://dev.twitter.com/docs/embedded-tweets)
store the tweet’s HTML & author URL in a custom database table
display the tweet when displaying the field from a template
About Field Types
They are the most granular building block for content managed by eZ Publish. Quite a few are shipped by default (https://confluence.ez.no/display/EZP/FieldTypes).
They are responsible for:
storing data, either using the native storage engine mechanisms, or specific means
validating input data
making the data searchable (if applicable)
displaying an instance of itself
Tutorial Steps
The bundle
FieldTypes, like any other eZ Publish 5 extensions, must be provided as Symfony 2 bundles. This chapter will cover the creation and organization of this bundle
Creating the bundle, structuring the bundle
API
This part will cover the implementation of the eZ Publish API elements required to implement a custom FieldType
Converter
Storing data from any FieldType into the Legacy Storage Engine requires that your custom data is mapped to the data model. This part will cover the implemention of the storage converter for the Tweet FieldType.
Custom storage
Whenever a FieldType must store more than the basic primitives the API supports, custom, external storage must be implemented. This part covers how a FieldType can store custom data anywhere, in particular into custom tables in the legacy database.