Helper

Overview

Features

• Configuration helper service for importing, exporting, and managing both simple config and config entities with support for module and directory-based operations
• Content entity batch updater utility class for efficiently processing large numbers of entities in post-update hooks with error handling and progress tracking
• Install profile switching service with validation of dependencies, requirements, and extension availability before switching profiles
• Menu helper service for building menus programmatically, converting link fields to menu structures, and managing menu item attributes
• Theme helper service for checking active/default themes, managing base theme inheritance, and programmatically setting the default theme
• Layout Builder helper service for checking entity layout status, managing overridden layouts, and extracting layout plugins
• Text format helper service for adding/removing tags and attributes from filter_html restrictions
• File helper service for creating/reusing file entities and converting file URIs to data URIs
• Current entity service for detecting the current page entity from route matches including node previews, REST endpoints, and Layout Builder pages
• Entity type helper for generating entity options for select fields
• Plugin utility class for invoking plugin callbacks and generating plugin option lists
• Array helper with methods for value/key replacement, uniqueness checking, filtering, and even chunking
• Render element utilities for wrapping elements, attaching libraries, headers, feeds, and managing access
• HTML helper for removing HTML comments from markup
• Utility class for unique shutdown function registration, nested batch execution, and string CamelCase conversion
• Twig extension providing file_data_uri() function for embedding files as data URIs in templates
• Admin Toolbar Tools integration adding Flush PHP, Flush Libraries, and Flush Bootstrap menu items
• Drush commands for clearing libraries/bootstrap caches, switching install profiles, managing module schema versions, and resetting post-update hooks
• Node Field block for rendering any node field in block regions outside the content area
• Entity Select form element for creating select fields populated with entities of a specified type
• Validation constraints for ensuring unique values within entity fields
• Logger mail backend for capturing emails to the log instead of sending (useful for development/testing)
• JSON response classes for PSR-7 responses with automatic encoding
• JSON and Composer file helpers with caching support for reading/writing JSON data
• Config cache tag invalidator event subscriber for easy cache invalidation when config changes
• ValidatableConfigFormBase abstract class for creating config forms with typed config validation
• Sub-theme region inheritance feature allowing themes to inherit regions from base themes via inherit_regions flag
• Layout Builder inline block validation preventing inline blocks in default layouts to avoid content dependencies
• Core form HTML5 validation toggle for disabling novalidate attribute on forms
• Textarea widget enablement for text field types as an alternative to the textarea_widget_for_text module
• Core layout provider hiding for filtering out unwanted layout plugins by provider module

Use Cases

Tips

• Use ContentEntityUpdater for batch processing in post_update hooks - it handles batching, error recovery, and progress tracking automatically
• The helper.config service supports both simple config and config entities transparently - no need to handle them differently
• Set core_form_novalidate to true in helper.settings to disable HTML5 validation globally for easier debugging during development
• Use the helper_logger mail plugin during development to capture all emails to the log instead of sending them
• Add inherit_regions: true to sub-theme info.yml files to automatically inherit base theme regions
• The ContentEntityUpdater supports limiting to specific bundles using the format 'entity_type:bundle1:bundle2'