Drupal Taxonomy and Vocabulary Setup

Setting Up Drupal Taxonomy and Vocabularies

Drupal taxonomy is a content classification mechanism. Vocabularies are categories of classifiers (Genre, Tag, Region), Terms are specific values within vocabulary (Fiction, Moscow).

Creating a Vocabulary

Structure → Taxonomy → Add vocabulary. Name, description, machine name — used in code and URL.

Or via Drush:

drush php-eval "
\$vocab = \Drupal\taxonomy\Entity\Vocabulary::create([
    'vid' => 'product_category',
    'name' => 'Product Category',
]);
\$vocab->save();
"

Adding Taxonomy Field to Content Type

Structure → Content Types → [type] → Manage fields → Add field → Link to Taxonomy Term.

Field settings:

• Vocabulary: select created one
• Number of values: 1 (one category) or Unlimited (tags)
• Widget: Autocomplete (for tags) or Select list (for categories)

Hierarchical Taxonomy

Terms can have parents — builds tree. Example: Clothing → Men's Clothing → T-shirts.

use Drupal\taxonomy\Entity\Term;

// Create term with parent
$parent = Term::create([
    'vid' => 'product_category',
    'name' => 'Clothing',
]);
$parent->save();

$child = Term::create([
    'vid' => 'product_category',
    'name' => 'Men\'s Clothing',
    'parent' => $parent->id(),
]);
$child->save();

Views for Category Pages

Views → Add view → content type, filter by taxonomy field. For automatic term pages — enable Views Taxonomy Term in view configuration.

// Programmatic query of nodes by taxonomy term
$query = \Drupal::entityQuery('node')
    ->condition('type', 'product')
    ->condition('field_category.entity.tid', $term_id)
    ->condition('status', 1)
    ->sort('created', 'DESC')
    ->accessCheck(TRUE)
    ->pager(20);

$nids = $query->execute();
$nodes = Node::loadMultiple($nids);

URL Aliases for Terms

Pathauto module automatically generates URLs: /catalog/[term:name]. Setup: Configuration → Search and metadata → URL aliases → Pathauto → templates for taxonomy.

Timelines

Creating vocabularies, adding fields to content types, setting up Views for category pages — 3–5 hours.