Hi.
In an attempt to create a robust yet intuitive page authoring experience for our content authors, I've experimented some with both the inline_entity_form (requires EntityReference) and the fields_collection modules. I'm looking for advice on how to use these or other modules to accomplish the following before diving into making a custom module. Thank you in advance for any replies received:
1. The content author creates a new page
2. To this page, the content author sets the page title and allowed groups (checklist field tied to our custom module using hook_node_access).
3. To this page, the content author adds a number of 'main' content parts (think in terms of paragraphs), with the ability for each paragraph to choose which of the groups they want to allow to see any particular paragraph.
4. The content author then sets any of up to 4 'section' titles for corresponding additional sections which may contain the aforementioned type of 'paragraph' content to, each 'section' having an option to set allowed groups, and each contained paragraph also allowing an option to set allowed groups.
To visualize this, the 'sections' would be rendered as separate tabs containing paragraphs, shown below a few 'main' paragraphs.
Sometimes the 'paragraphs' will be authored especially for a particular page, and sometimes the paragraphs will simply be referenced from paragraphs which were created previously.
I accomplished this using EntityReference with inline_entity_form by having 3 content types, 1 for the 'page', one for a 'tab section' and one for a 'content part' (aka 'paragraph'), but I ran into the following issues:
a) The inline_entity_form has some issues pertaining to nesting, but perhaps this will be fixed soon as it seems to have been a reported issue
b) Even with the nesting issue resolved, the way of viewing the content in edit mode is a bit too cumbersome when pushed to this extent to make for a good UX. The content author sees a list of the arbitrary content titles that they were required to add to their content parts and would have to click 'edit' just to be able to see any of the contained actual content. For a page with several content items, this could make for a lot of hunting and seeking for which content item they actually wish to edit.
I looked at fields_collection and made fields for the content items instead of using content types. This way is a lot cleaner for the content author, except I lose the ability to have the content author add existing content, and, more importantly, I lose the ability to have the display of the content item for site visitors obey hook_node_access implementations.
I've also tried nesting EntityReferences backed by inline_entity_form into field collections. and vice-versa. each with varying 'not quite there' results.
Any ideas would be appreciated.
Tom