How to Control URL Addresses in Drupal. The Pathauto Module Overview

A good CMS can be recognised by how it deals with the URL addresses of individual subpages. Convenient linking attracts users from search engines and has a significant impact on SEO. In this article, I'll introduce you to the Pathauto Drupal module, which is used to automate the creation of page aliases.

With this module, you can easily configure efficient, maintenance-free aliases for your content, including taxonomy terms and user pages.

Dates

The first version of Pathauto was released in February 2006 as an add-on to Drupal 4. Stable 1.0 version was released for Drupal 5 in 2007. The current code of this module from the 8.x-1.x branch is the result of a long evolution involving many members of the Drupal.org community.

Popularity

The figures from the official statistics speak for themselves – the Pathauto module is used by over 640 thousand pages. And 32% of these are built on Drupal 8 and 9. We’re dealing here with one of the "essentials", installed immediately at the stage of creating new projects.

Module's creators

The module is currently being maintained by four developers:

• Sascha Grossenbacher - Lead Developer at the MD Systems company,
• Dave Reid - Senior Developer at the Lullabot company,
• Greg Knaddison - from the Morris Animal Foundation,
• Frederik Sandberg Olesen.

Since the beginnings of the Pathauto module, over 100 people have been involved in its development, creating a total of almost 1,600 commits. The tremendous contribution of the community is further evidenced by over 3,000 reported tasks and bugs on Drupal.org. Unfortunately, many of these remain unresolved.

Purpose of the module

With bare Drupal, you can create URL aliases for individual subpages, but you have to do it manually. If you don't fill in the field with the alias, the new content will have standard, inconvenient addresses like /node/123 or /taxonomy/term/456.

The Pathauto module automates the addition of aliases by generating them according to the template with tokens specified by you. For example, static pages may have a title derivative address (/foo-bar), and taxonomy terms may contain a vocabulary name (/vocabulary-name/foo-bar).

Unboxing

You can download the module from Drupal.org or join the project by running the following command:

composer require drupal/pathauto

After launching Pathauto, go to its settings by selecting Configuration → Search and Metadata → URL Aliases → Patterns.

Module's use

Pathauto offers a broad range of settings for the methods of generating aliases. It also allows you to carry out mass operations on already existing content. I'll briefly describe below the most important options available.

URL address templates

The basic functionality of the Pathauto module is creating URL address templates, i.e. strings of characters containing tokens. Individual aliases are generated based on them when content is being saved.

I'll explain it using the example of a blog. If you want your posts to be available under the address http://example.com/2021/foo-bar.html%20 containing the year of publication and the title, go to the panel Configuration → Search and Metadata → URL Aliases → Patterns and add a new template for the appropriate content type:

Try to create a new blog post now. It should get the address /2021/foo-bar.html. Note that you can still overwrite its URL alias, however by default it is generated automatically:

Transliteration

Page titles usually contain spaces and special characters. Pathauto module automatically converts them to the ASCII format separated by dashes. Then, a title like "How to Make Crème Brûlée?" will be replaced with a simpler version – "how-to-make-creme-brulee". The settings for this conversion can be found in the "Settings" tab.

I suggest that you leave most of these options at the default position, but pay special attention to the "Strings to Remove" field. It contains strings of characters that will be removed from the address, including numerous English prepositions and articles. If you create a blog post titled "A Guide To Drupal", you'll end up with an address like /2021/guide-drupal.html, which is not always the desired result.

The other settings allow for very detailed customisation of transliteration in aliases, which is useful for multi-language support. Here you can, for example, decide on how to handle punctuation.

Mass generation of URL addresses

By default, Pathauto only generates aliases when the content is being saved. This means that if you change the URL template, the modification will not be reflected immediately in the aliases on the entire page. Also, after adding a new template, all its content will not get a new URL address immediately.

When creating large websites, it is often necessary to quickly regenerate aliases for the existing content. This is done with the "Bulk Generate" function, which enables mass operations on URL addresses.

Be very careful not to accidentally overwrite the existing aliases with newer versions. Here I would recommend installing the Redirect module, which saves the redirects between the old and new subpage addresses.

Removing aliases

The Pathauto module also has an advanced panel for removing aliases. Be very careful when using it. Any changes introduced here are irreversible. You'll probably need the "Only delete automatically generated aliases" option to prevent deleting manually overwritten aliases.

Hooks and integrations

Pathauto from the 8.x-1.x branch allows you to handle any kind of entities with plugins like @AliasType, and also provides some simple hooks:

• hook_pathauto_is_alias_reserved() - blocks the creation of an alias if it is reserved by another module. In such a case, a number will be added to the alias (e.g. /foo-bar1).
• hook_pathauto_punctuation_chars_alter() – it is used to add new punctuation settings.
• hook_pathauto_pattern_alter() - allows you to modify the URL address template.
• hook_pathauto_alias_alter() - allows you to change the alias after generating it.

When creating your own Drupal modules, you should think about adding an optional configuration for Pathauto to them. This is quite a common practice, for example in the Group module. As a result, the user receives default, ready-made alias templates.

The Drupal Pathauto module - summary

Pathauto is an extremely powerful module that is used in most of our Drupal development projects. It keeps URL addresses consistent and frees editors from having to manually form aliases. Its usefulness is confirmed by hundreds of thousands of installations reported in the official statistics. I definitely recommend getting better acquainted with its abilities.