How do you manually create an EAV attribute on Magento 2.2?

Question

I have been fighting with a module with an InstallData.php that will not execute on Magento 2.2.1, but I need to get this task done today.

For the meantime, how can I create the needed category thumbnail EAV attribute, so that the file will upload and save properly when the category is saved?

Is it as simple as creating the row in the "eav_attribute" table? I assume there must be more to the process?

Answer 1

You need to prepare InstallData script for category attribute as below:

<?php
/* file: app/code/{{Your_Package}}/{{module}}/Attribute/Setup/InstallData.php */

namespace {{Your_Package}}\{{module}}\Setup;

use Magento\Framework\Setup\InstallDataInterface;
use Magento\Framework\Setup\ModuleContextInterface;
use Magento\Framework\Setup\ModuleDataSetupInterface;
use Magento\Eav\Setup\EavSetup;
use Magento\Eav\Setup\EavSetupFactory;
use Magento\Catalog\Model\Category;
use Magento\Eav\Model\Entity\Attribute\ScopedAttributeInterface;

/**
 * @codeCoverageIgnore
 */
class InstallData implements InstallDataInterface
{
    /**
     * @var EavSetupFactory
     */
    private $eavSetupFactory;

    /**
     *
     * @param EavSetupFactory $eavSetupFactory
     */
    public function __construct(EavSetupFactory $eavSetupFactory)
    {
        $this->eavSetupFactory = $eavSetupFactory;
    }

    public function install(ModuleDataSetupInterface $setup, ModuleContextInterface $context)
    {
        /** @var EavSetup $eavSetup */
        $eavSetup = $this->eavSetupFactory->create(['setup' => $setup]);
        $eavSetup->addAttribute(
            Category::ENTITY,
            'custom_attribute',
            [
                'type' => 'varchar',
                'label' => 'Custom attribute',
                'input' => 'text',
                'required' => false,
                'sort_order' => 100,
                'global' => ScopedAttributeInterface::SCOPE_STORE,
                'group' => 'General Information',
            ]
        );
    }
}

As you may know, in the latest Magento versions, the category form for the admin panel is created via configuration file (app/code/Magento/Catalog/view/adminhtml/ui_component/category_form.xml or vendor/magento/module-catalog/view/adminhtml/ui_component/category_form.xml), so we need to create the same configuration file for our module and add our attribute to the category form. Please, see the example below:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<form xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
      xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="urn:magento:module:Magento_Ui:etc/ui_configuration.xsd">
    <fieldset name="custom_content">
        <argument name="data" xsi:type="array">
            <item name="config" xsi:type="array">
                <item name="label" xsi:type="string" translate="true">Custom Content</item>
                <item name="collapsible" xsi:type="boolean">true</item>
                <item name="sortOrder" xsi:type="number">100</item>
            </item>
        </argument>
        <field name="custom_attribute">
            <argument name="data" xsi:type="array">
                <item name="config" xsi:type="array">
                    <item name="sortOrder" xsi:type="number">10</item>
                    <item name="dataType" xsi:type="string">string</item>
                    <item name="formElement" xsi:type="string">input</item>
                    <item name="label" xsi:type="string" translate="true">Custom Attribute</item>
                    <item name="required" xsi:type="boolean">false</item>
                </item>
            </argument>
        </field>
    </fieldset>
</form>

Update the version of your module under etc/module.xml and run below commands to get setup upgrade:

php bin/magento setup:upgrade

You may require to remove the existing module entry from database table "setup_modules" as you want to run InstallData script.