Rules for Fools: An Introduction to the Rules Module

Thursday, Sep 27, 2012

Slides

Overview

• What is the Rules module?
• What are Events, Conditions and Actions?
• Using the Data Selector
• Components and Scheduling
• Looping Actions
• Real world examples
  • Using Rules to change the article node title to include the node id?
  • Using Rules to email the administrators when a new comment is created?
  • Using Rules with Views Bulk Operations to unpublish nodes?

What is the rules module?

• Rules consist of Events, Conditions and Actions
• Simply it looks for an event
• When that event happens (under certain conditions)
• It fires off an action

What is an event?

• Events are linked to things happening on your site
• Comment (viewed, created, deleted)
• Node (viewed, updated, created)
• System (cron, bootstrapped)
• Taxonomy (create term/vocabulary)
• User (log in/out, created, updated)
• Extended by other modules (Profile, Feeds etc)

What is a condition?

• Conditions check what the specifications of the event are
• Data (comparison, empty)
• Entity (field exists)
• Content (load all fields)
• Path (check path)
• User (check role)

What is an action?

• Do something
• Data (add variable, set value)
• Entity (create entity, fetch entity)
• Node (publish content, make sticky)
• System (redirect, send email, set message)
• User (add role)

The data selector

• Choosing the data you want to interact with
• Direct input mode
  • Using tokens
  • [site:current-date]
  • [site:current-user]
  • [node:title]
  • [node:nid]
• Data selection mode – Interactive browse through tokens

What are components?

• A set of rules/actions
• To be used either by Rules or other modules
• Views Bulk Operations
• Drupal Commerce

What is scheduling rules?

• Set your rules to be activated based on time
• Set nodes to be unpublished 2 weeks after publishing
• Disallow comments 1 year after publish date

What are looping actions?

• Do the action for multiple items
• Send email to all users
• Unpublish referenced items

Real World Examples

Using Rules to change the article node title to include the node id?

1. Go to Rules (Administration > Workflow > Rules)
2. • Add new rule
3. Name it
4. Event: Before Saving Content
5. • Add Condition
6. Content is of Type
7. Value = Article
8. • Add action
9. Set a data value
10. Data - “node:title”
11. Value - “node:title – node:nid”
12. Save

Using Rules to email the administrators when a new comment is created?

1. Go to Rules (Administration > Workflow > Rules)
2. • Add new rule
3. Name it
4. Event: After a comment is saved
5. (+ Add Condition) Not needed for this rule! Fool!
6. • Add action
7. Send an email to all users of a role
8. Select role - “administrator”
9. Values – Subject, Message (can include tokens)
10. Save

Using Rules with Views Bulk Operations to unpublish nodes?

1. Go to Rules (Administration > Workflow > Rules)
2. Select components
3. • Add new component
4. Rule set (or action if no conditions needed)
5. Name it
6. Data type – Node
7. Label, and machine name
8. • Add rule
9. Name rule - “Unpublish node”
10. • Add condition (if required)
11. • Add action
12. Unpublish Content
13. Data: node
14. Go to your view (or create a new one)
15. Add Bulk operations: content
16. Choose the required component “Unpublish nodes”
17. Save
18. It will then use the rule on all the ids you send to it!

Can Rules make me a sandwich? … Maybe?