TripalEntity

The TripalEntity class is an instance of a ContentBaseEntity interface. It inherits the functionality of a Drupal Entity but allows us to provide Tripal specific customizations. In particular the following functions will be overridden:

• preSave()

  • Cache the biological field data provided by the user.

  • Remove the biological data so Drupal doesn’t store it using it’s own EntityStorageInterface. If Drupal stores anything it will be context information for the TripalFieldStorage plugin implementations.

  • Note: Caching and then removing the biological data prevents Drupal from duplicating it.

• postSave()

  • Pulls the biological field data from the cache.

  • Determines the proper TripalFieldStorage implementation that is needed for each field

  • Calls the proper TripalFieldStorage instance for each field to save the data.

  • We are exploring performance improvements by passing multiple fields with the same storage at once.

• postLoad()

  • Determines the proper TripalFieldStorage implementation that is needed for each field.

  • Passes the identifying context information Drupal saved for each field to the correct TripalFieldStorage plugin implementation based on the field definitions.

  • TripalFieldStorage instances will load the data for each field and add it to the entity.

  • We are exploring performance improvements by passing multiple fields with the same storage at once.