EntityAPIController not found

[jacksinn]

Module uses 'controller class' => 'EntityAPIController', but Backdrop doesn't have that class. Using Defaults ('DefaultEntityController') loads the class but there is no create method on it. Is there another entity controller I can use with the create method that will work?

[quicksketch]

Hi @jacksinn, I think in the case of Backdrop, you'll need to make your own controller class in the same way that nodes, comments, users, and terms do. We don't have an abstraction around creating full entities, each type of entity has to create both its own entity controller and entity class. For a really simple entity type, you might be able to set the controller class to EntityDatabaseStorageController (which does have the create() method), but you'd probably run into situations that require extending the class.

I'd suggest making class ParagraphController extends EntityDatabaseStorageController in a paragraph.entity.inc file, and include that in hook_autoload_info(). Then override/add the methods you see fit for paragraphs module.

In Backdrop, entities are real objects, so in addition to specifying a controller class in hook_entity_info(), you also specify an entity class value, such as this in node_entity_info().

function node_entity_info() {
  $return = array(
    'node' => array(
      'label' => t('Node'),
      'bundle label' => t('Type'),
      'controller class' => 'NodeStorageController',
      'entity class' => 'Node',
      // ...

Then to create an entity you can still use $node = entity_create('node', $data) if you like, but most of the time we just create the node object directly, such as $node = new Node($data).