Multiple Editors per Node in Drupal 7

One of the things that makes Drupal great is its flexible user permission system. The out of the box permissions grid we are all familiar with covers most uses cases of controlling what users can and cannot do. It is also very easy for module developers to create new permissions and roles that restrict the logic they implement.

Nevertheless, I have encountered a practical use case where the default configuration options are not enough. Namely, if you need to have multiple users with access to edit a particular node of a given type but without them necessarily having access to edit others of the same type. In other words, the next great article should be editable by Laura and Glenn but not by their colleagues. However, out of the box, users of a particular role can be masters either of their own content or of all content of a certain type. So this is not immediately possible.

In this article I am going to show you my solution to this problem in the form of a simple custom module called editor_list. Article nodes will have a field where you can select users and only these users (or those who have full access) will be able to edit that particular node. You can find the module already in this git repository and you can install it on your site for a quick start. Do keep in mind that it has a dependency on the Entity Reference module as we will see in a minute.

I will keep the code comments to a minimum to save space but you can find them in the repository if you want. Basic knowledge of Drupal 7 is assumed in the remainder of this tutorial.

Continue reading %Multiple Editors per Node in Drupal 7%

by Daniel Sipos via SitePoint