CiviCRM Entity

This Drupal 7 module integrates CiviCRM data into Drupal as fieldable entities using Entity API.

If CiviCRM triggers hook_civicrm_pre() on $op = 'delete' for an object, that class of objects can be entities in Drupal 7.

If your CiviCRM database is separate from your Drupal database, you must configure the Drupal site's settings.php file with settings that enable Drupal to access CiviCRM's tables.

Concept

Adding Drupal fields to CiviCRM entities enables two important things:

• Extending CiviCRM entities using Drupal's UI. This isn't so useful in my experience, because the Drupal data is separated from CiviCRM data.
• Creating links between content and entities with shared reference fields. The same taxonomy terms can be used to classify nodes and CiviCRM objects, which opens up many opportunities for site builders to integrate CiviCRM data into the Drupal site.

Real life

This module was built to allow CiviEvent records to have a taxonomy term field. The taxonomy term field was used in a Calendar module view of CiviEvent rows.

Extensive rewriting of the Views calendar row handler plugin for CiviEvent records was necessary because the handler included with CiviCRM is stripped of the ability to render a calendar legend based on taxonomy term reference field values.

Some work was done to attach fields to CiviCRM groups, but it may be unfinished.

Screenshots

Adding fields to CiviCRM entity bundles

CiviEvent entities have their own field configuration UI similiar to nodes. Any field type can be created or an existing field can be reused.

Editing Drupal fields on CiviCRM objects

A new edit button displayed at the bottom of a CiviEvent form. The CiviEvent must already have an id so the button does not appear on forms for new CiviEvents.

The edit form shows the field I added previously.