Ability to "swap" a field

[bymayo]

I've had this issue a few times since using Craft 5 where for example I have a "Paragraph" field which is a "Plain Text" field but further down the line the client wants to add a link in to the text so now it has to be a "CKEditor" field - I can only currently just remove the field and then add the new field.

But this wipes the content!

It would be good if we could "swap" fields out if the content is similar.

In Craft 4 we'd just create a specific field and then maybe change the type which would work.

But this isn't possible with Craft 5 as this "Plain Text" field will be used elsewhere throughout the project.

[thupsi]

I think that's the same suggestion as #14566

[bymayo]

@thupsi It's similar, except that issue seems like it's to clone the same field type.

I'm suggesting it should be possible to swap the field from one type to another, without data loss (Obviously this would only work on certain fields, but in my case swapping a "Plain Text" to a "CKEditor" field would be fine)

[thupsi]

Yes, you're right, my mistake! 🙂 But if you could clone a "Plain Text" field in place then you could change it to "CKEditor" without data loss and without affecting other instances. Same for other "compatible" field types.

[brandonkelly]

This is resolved in Craft 5.10, which makes it possible to swap out the underlying custom field for existing field layout elements. (#18814)