Reuse existing fields

It’s possible to reuse already existing fields by using the useExistingField flag. By doing so, you can extend existing fields with your own properties on a per element level. It is highly recommend to use the header field this way, because it is used for the title on different places in the backend.

Reusing fields between different Content Blocks is only possible, if the option prefixFields: false is turned off. As soon as the identifier is the same, the field will only be generated once. Be careful to define the same type for the field. Settings can be overridden on a per element basis the same way as with core fields. Here it is not needed to define useExistingField.

It’s recommended to use existing fields whenever possible instead of creating new ones. This also avoids the risk of the “Row size too large” problem that can arise when a database table becomes too large and difficult to manage.

It’s also important to consider which existing fields are appropriate to reuse (the extension makes no restrictions here or carries out checks). It is generally not recommended to reuse fields such as uid, pid or sorting as they have a specific use and should not be misused due to the potential for negative side effects. Below we have listed the fields from the table tt_content that are eligible for reuse:

• header
• header_layout
• header_position
• date
• header_link
• subheader
• bodytext
• assets
• image
• media
• imagewidth
• imageheight
• imageborder
• imageorient
• imagecols
• image_zoom
• bullets_type
• table_delimiter
• table_enclosure
• table_caption
• file_collections
• filelink_sorting
• filelink_sorting_direction
• target
• filelink_size
• uploads_description
• uploads_type
• pages
• selected_categories
• category_field

For example, if you want to use the existing column bodytext, or header or image you can do one of the following:

name: vendor/content-block-name
group: common
fields:
    -
        identifier: header
        useExistingField: true
    -
        identifier: bodytext
        useExistingField: true
        enableRichtext: true
    -
        identifier: image
        useExistingField: true