How to programmatically create a node in Drupal 8?

Question

I'm designing a new module in Drupal 8. It's a long-term project that won't be going public for a few months at least, so I'm using it as a way to figure out what's new.

In this module, I want to be able to programmatically create nodes. In Drupal 7, I would do this by creating the object, then calling "node_submit" and "node_save".

These functions no longer exist in Drupal 8. Instead, according to the documentation, "Modules and scripts may programmatically submit nodes using the usual form API pattern." I'm at a loss. What does this mean? I've used Form API to create forms in Drupal 7, but I don't get what the docs are saying here.

What I'm looking to do is programmatically create at least one and possibly multiple new nodes, based on information not taken directly from a user-presented form. I need to be able to:

1) Specify the content type

2) Specify the URL path

3) Set any other necessary variables that would previously have been handled by the now-obsolete node_object_prepare()

4) Commit the new node object

I would prefer to be able to do this in an independent, highly abstracted function not tied to a specific block or form.

So what am I missing?

Answer 1

use Drupal\node\Entity\Node;

$node = Node::create(array(
    'type' => 'your_content_type',
    'title' => 'your title',
    'langcode' => 'en',
    'uid' => '1',
    'status' => 1,
    'field_fields' => array(),
));

$node->save();

Answer 2

The D8 version of devel/devel_generate module has a good example of this.

From devel_generate :

  $edit_node = array(
    'nid' => NULL, 
    'type' => $node_type, 
    'uid' => $users[array_rand($users)], 
    'revision' => mt_rand(0, 1), 
    'status' => TRUE, 
    'promote' => mt_rand(0, 1), 
    'created' => REQUEST_TIME - mt_rand(0, $results['time_range']), 
    'langcode' => devel_generate_get_langcode($results),
  );
  if ($type->has_title) {
    // We should not use the random function if the value is not random
    if ($results['title_length'] < 2) {
      $edit_node['title'] = devel_create_greeking(1, TRUE);
    }
    else {
      $edit_node['title'] = devel_create_greeking(mt_rand(1, $results['title_length']), TRUE);
    }
  }
  else {
    $edit_node['title'] = '';
  }
  // @todo Remove once comment become field. http://drupal.org/node/731724
  if (Drupal::moduleHandler()->moduleExists('comment')) {
    $edit_node['comment'] = variable_get('comment_' . $node_type, COMMENT_NODE_OPEN);
  }
  $node = entity_create('node', $edit_node);

Using formatted text

Using grep with before/after code lines helped me figure out how to add a node with 'full_html'.

Search the Drupal core code with this :

$ cd drupal/core
$ grep -B 5 -A 5 -r entity_create.*node * > /tmp/temp-grep.txt

Then, open up /tmp/temp-grep.txt in a text editor. Poke around there a bit and you'll see this :

--
modules/editor/src/Tests/EditorFileUsageTest.php-    $body_value .= '<img src="awesome-llama.jpg" data-editor-file-uuid="invalid-editor-file-uuid-value" />';
modules/editor/src/Tests/EditorFileUsageTest.php-    // Test handling of a non-existing UUID.
modules/editor/src/Tests/EditorFileUsageTest.php-    $body_value .= '<img src="awesome-llama.jpg" data-editor-file-uuid="30aac704-ba2c-40fc-b609-9ed121aa90f4" />';
modules/editor/src/Tests/EditorFileUsageTest.php-    // Test editor_entity_insert(): increment.
modules/editor/src/Tests/EditorFileUsageTest.php-    $this->createUser();
modules/editor/src/Tests/EditorFileUsageTest.php:    $node = entity_create('node', array(
modules/editor/src/Tests/EditorFileUsageTest.php-      'type' => 'page',
modules/editor/src/Tests/EditorFileUsageTest.php-      'title' => 'test',
modules/editor/src/Tests/EditorFileUsageTest.php-      'body' => array(
modules/editor/src/Tests/EditorFileUsageTest.php-        'value' => $body_value,
modules/editor/src/Tests/EditorFileUsageTest.php-        'format' => 'filtered_html',
--

Note how 'body' now becomes an array with a 'value' and a 'format'.