Entity Reference: Preview

Why this module?

When you preview the latest version of an entity (ex: a node) you only preview that entity. That means that referenced entities in that page are rendered with the published version, not the latest. This module addresses that.

When prompted, many people ask: Wait! that is not the default behavior already?

Have you ever wanted to preview a listing from a view (or a block, or a layout builder page, ...) with the latest version of the embedded entities? This module addresses that.

How about entity reference revisions?

Using entity reference revisions may make sense in many cases. However entity reference revisions has implications in the storage layer creating many unnecessary database entries. Ultimately this can lead to general slowness.

If you only need Entity Reference Revisions for preview, you are likely to benefit from this module.

Features

1. View the latest embedded drafts while previewing an entity.

This slim module provides a new entity reference formatter to enable preview. Upon selection of the formatter it will render as usual. While previewing an entity that uses this formatter it will render the latest version of the referenced entity.

In other words, viewing a node on the .../latest will also show the latest on the embedded entities.

2. View the latest embedded drafts after clicking a button.

Some times you want to see the embedded entities in their latest form but the page you are looking at is not a node (or a previewable entity). In that case you don't have the Latest tab to click.

Entity Reference: Preview ships with a toolbar item and block that includes a button to manually start and stop previewing your entity references. Notice that this module will not preview anything included in the page that is not using the formatter shown above.

3. Preview the entities rendered by views

Having the ability to preview the entities in a view is another important feature. Just opt-in to previewability in your view and that's it! Whenever you browse the site in preview mode you will see the latest versions in the views that allow it.

4. Notice which embedded entities have unpublished drafts.

When rendering the referenced entities in normal mode (not previewing) you have the ability to show a little blue dot on the entities that have a publishable draft. This indicator is useful when browsing your site to see the state of the content of a page.

To use this feature you will need to have the appropriate permission (view entity_reference_preview indicator) and the feature must be enabled in /admin/config/content/entity-reference-preview.