Glue for Craft CMS
Installation
Requirements
- Craft CMS 5.3 or later
- PHP 8.2 or later
Nothing else. Glue has no runtime dependencies, makes no outbound requests, and needs no build step.
Install
composer require justinholtweb/craft-glue
php craft plugin/install glue
Or find Glue in the Plugin Store and install it there.
The install creates one table, glue_merges, which holds the merge history. Nothing else in your
database is touched at install time.
Choose an edition
Glue installs as Lite. Lite is a complete merge tool — every combine strategy, every target, the warnings, the disposition of the sources and the history.
Pro adds relation rewiring, presets, cross-site merging, the console commands and the duplicate finder. Switch editions from Settings → Plugins → Glue, or buy a licence in the Plugin Store.
Give people permission
Glue adds three permissions under Settings → Users → User Groups → group → Glue:
| Permission | What it allows |
|---|---|
| Merge entries | The merge action in the entry index, and the merge screen |
| View the merge history | The History screen, and the note on an entry's edit screen |
| Save and delete merge presets | Writing presets, which are project config |
Craft's own permissions still apply on top, and they are the authority. A merge is a save, so the
user must be able to save the merged entry; a merge that trashes its sources is a delete, so they
must be able to delete those too. Glue checks both with Craft's own canSave() and canDelete()
before it writes anything — a plugin permission that let somebody write to a section they cannot
otherwise write to would be a hole, not a feature.
The same rule reaches everything else a merge touches:
- Both entries must be viewable. Loading a pair shows their values, so it is reading them.
- Rewiring needs the right to edit the retired entries, even when they are left in place, and only changes elements — and sites — the user could have edited by hand. The rest are left alone and counted in the result.
- Merging in every site needs every one of those sites. If one is not editable, the merge is refused rather than done in some sites and not others.
- The duplicate finder and the history only show entries the user can view. A history row whose entry still exists but is out of reach says “an entry you cannot view”.
Console commands run with no user and are not limited by any of this.
Admins have all three.
Check it worked
Go to any entry index, tick two entries, and open the actions menu. Merge with Glue… should be there, and enabled only while exactly two entries are selected.
If it is not there, check that the user has the Merge entries permission, and that the index is an entry index — Glue merges entries and nothing else.
Uninstalling
php craft plugin/uninstall glue
This drops glue_merges and removes the plugin's settings from project config. Entries that
Glue merged are ordinary entries and are not affected — they stay exactly as they are. What you
lose is the record of which of them were merges.