Easy Breadcrumb

The Easy Breadcrumb module is designed to simplify breadcrumb navigation on your Drupal site by automatically deriving breadcrumb trails from your existing URL paths or menu structure. This guide covers everything you need to know—from installation and configuration to advanced customization and best practices.

1. Installing and Enabling Easy Breadcrumb

As a contributed module, Easy Breadcrumb must be installed before use. You can install it via Composer or download it manually:

• Using Composer: Run the following command from your project root:

  composer require drupal/easy_breadcrumb

• Manual Installation: Download the module from Drupal.org and place it in your modules/contrib directory.

After installation, enable the module through the Extend page (/admin/modules) or via Drush:

drush en easy_breadcrumb -y

2. Configuring Breadcrumb Settings

Once Easy Breadcrumb is enabled, you can customize its behavior by adjusting a wide range of settings on its configuration page (/admin/config/user-interface/easy-breadcrumb). 

The settings are divided into two main sections: General settings and Advanced settings. Below is an exhaustive explanation of the available options:

General Settings

• Applies to administration pages: 
  When checked, Easy Breadcrumb will also generate breadcrumb trails for administration pages and routes (e.g., those under /admin). Unchecking this option disables breadcrumb generation for such pages.
• Include invalid paths alias as plain-text segments: 
  This option, when enabled, will include aliases for invalid paths (i.e., those that do not resolve correctly) as plain text in the breadcrumb trail.
• Include the current page as a segment: 
  If checked, the breadcrumb trail will append the title of the current page as its last segment.
• Remove repeated identical segments: 
  This setting removes any duplicate segments in the breadcrumb. It ensures that if a segment appears more than once consecutively, only one instance will be shown.
• Remove repeated identical segments – only validate on text: 
  When enabled, the module compares only the text of each segment (ignoring additional attributes) to decide if duplicates should be removed.
• Include the front page as a segment: 
  This option ensures that the front page (home) is always displayed as the first segment in the breadcrumb trail.
• Alternative title field name for breadcrumb: 
  You can specify a field name (e.g., field_breadcrumb_title) to be used as an alternative title for the breadcrumb. This is useful if you want a custom title different from the node’s title.
• Title for the front page segment: 
  Define the text to display for the home segment. For example, you might set it to “Home.”
• Use the real page title when available: 
  If enabled, the module will use the actual page title (if set) instead of deducing it from the URL.
• Use menu title when available: 
  This option tells Easy Breadcrumb to prefer the menu title over the raw path component. (Note: The corresponding dropdown for “Preferred menu” might be disabled if not applicable.)
• Use page title as fallback for menu title: 
  When the menu title is missing, this option allows the module to fall back to using the page title as a substitute.
• Use site title as the front page segment: 
  Instead of a hardcoded “Home”, you can opt to display your site’s title as the front page breadcrumb segment.
• Add current breadcrumb as structured data: 
  If checked, the generated breadcrumb trail is also output as structured data in JSON-LD format. This improves SEO by helping search engines understand your site’s navigation.
• Follow redirects: 
  If the Redirect module is enabled, this option ensures that Easy Breadcrumb follows the configured redirects when generating breadcrumb paths.
• Limit breadcrumb trail segments: 
  When enabled, you can specify a maximum number of segments to display. Two numeric options are provided:
  • Breadcrumb segment count: Sets the upper limit of segments to display.
  • Breadcrumb segment minimum count: Ensures that the breadcrumb is only displayed if it contains at least the specified number of segments.

Advanced Settings

• Excluded paths: 
  Enter a list of paths (one per line) that should be excluded from breadcrumb generation. Paths can use escaped slashes (e.g., foo\/bar) or simple regular expressions.
• Titles to be replaced while generating segments: 
  Provide a line-separated list of title replacements. Each line should use the format TITLE::DIFFERENT_TITLE. This is useful for standardizing certain terms in your breadcrumb.
• Custom paths: 
  Define specific paths with custom breadcrumb patterns. Use a vertical bar (|) to separate crumbs and double-colon (::) to separate a crumb from its replacement. You can also include regular expressions (prefixed with regex!) to match dynamic paths.
• Display the front page segment on the front page: 
  If enabled, the home segment will appear even when you are on the front page.
• Do not check for path duplicate with the home page: 
  This option, when enabled, skips validation that might remove the home segment if it appears to be duplicated.
• Make the current page title segment a link: 
  When enabled, the breadcrumb segment corresponding to the current page will be rendered as a clickable link.
• Make the language path prefix a segment: 
  On multilingual sites, this option allows the language prefix (e.g., /en) to be included as a separate breadcrumb segment.
• Use absolute path for breadcrumb links: 
  If selected, the breadcrumb links will be rendered as absolute URLs instead of relative ones.
• Hide link to home page if it's the only breadcrumb item: 
  This setting hides the breadcrumb trail when it only contains a link to the home page.
• Add parent hierarchy: 
  For taxonomy term pages, enabling this option adds the entire parent hierarchy to the breadcrumb trail.
• Transformation mode for the segments' titles: 
  This dropdown lets you choose how to transform the text of breadcrumb segments. Options include:
  • None: No transformation.
  • Capitalize the first letter of each word: Each word’s first letter will be uppercase.
  • Only capitalize the first letter of each segment: Only the first letter of the entire segment is capitalized.
  • Capitalize all letters of each word: Every letter in each word is capitalized.
  • Force capitalization for specified words: Only the words you list will be forced to uppercase, with additional settings for case sensitivity and first-letter capitalization.
• Words to be ignored by the 'capitalizator': 
  Enter a space-separated list of words (e.g., “of and or de del y a”) that should not be altered by the transformation.
• Words to be forced to capitalization: 
  If you selected the forced capitalization mode, specify the words (space-separated) that must always appear in uppercase. Additional options control case sensitivity and whether only the first letter should be capitalized.
• Truncate the page's title: 
  This option, when enabled, limits the length of the current page title displayed in the breadcrumb. You can set:
  • Truncator length: The maximum number of characters allowed before truncation.
  • Truncator dots: Whether to append an ellipsis ("...") at the end of the truncated title.

These comprehensive configuration options allow you to fine-tune the breadcrumb generation to match your site’s navigation structure and design requirements. By carefully adjusting both general and advanced settings, you can ensure that your breadcrumbs are not only user-friendly but also optimized for search engines and consistent with your overall site architecture.

3. Overriding Default Breadcrumb Behavior

Easy Breadcrumb is highly configurable, and you can override default behavior to match your specific needs:

• Custom Patterns: Use tokens to dynamically generate link titles based on the current page or menu item properties.
• Manual Overrides: In certain cases, you might want to specify a custom breadcrumb for specific pages. This can be achieved via additional configuration settings or by using custom code.
• Integration with Other Modules: Combine Easy Breadcrumb with modules like Redirect to handle legacy URLs and ensure consistency across your site.

4. Integration with Themes

Easy Breadcrumb outputs its breadcrumb trail in a format that is designed to integrate seamlessly with your theme:

• Template Overrides: You can override the module’s default templates to match your site’s design. Create a custom Twig template in your theme to alter the markup and styling of the breadcrumb trail.
• CSS Customization: Adjust the appearance of your breadcrumbs by adding custom CSS classes or modifying the existing ones provided by Easy Breadcrumb.

5. Developer Customizations and API

For developers looking to extend or modify the functionality of Easy Breadcrumb, several hooks and APIs are available:

• hook_easy_breadcrumb_alter(): Use this hook to alter the generated breadcrumb array before it is rendered. This allows you to add, remove, or modify breadcrumb links programmatically.

6. Best Practices and Use Cases

To maximize the benefits of Easy Breadcrumb, consider these best practices:

• Maintain Consistency: Ensure that your URL structure and menu hierarchy are well-organized so that the automatically generated breadcrumbs accurately reflect your site’s navigation.
• Test Across Pages: Verify that the breadcrumb trails are generated correctly on all types of pages, including custom content types, taxonomy term pages, and administrative pages.
• SEO Considerations: Well-structured breadcrumbs can improve your site's SEO by providing clear navigation paths for search engines.
• Performance: Since breadcrumbs are generated on each page load, ensure that your configuration does not add unnecessary overhead.

Conclusion

The Easy Breadcrumb module is a powerful tool for enhancing navigation on your Drupal site. By automatically generating clean, intuitive breadcrumb trails based on your URL or menu structure, it not only improves user experience but also contributes to better SEO performance. Whether you are a site administrator configuring the module through the UI or a developer customizing its behavior via hooks and APIs, Easy Breadcrumb offers the flexibility and control needed to create effective navigation paths. With thorough configuration and adherence to best practices, you can ensure that your site’s breadcrumb navigation remains consistent, user-friendly, and optimized for search engines.