Storing the changes

There are various ways to store changes to $GLOBALS['TCA']. They depend - partly - on what you are trying to achieve and - a lot - on the version of TYPO3 which you are targeting. The TCA can only be changed from within an extension.

Storing in extensions

The advantage of putting your changes inside an extension is that they are nicely packaged in a self-contained entity which can be easily deployed on multiple servers.

The drawback is that the extension loading order must be finely controlled. However, in case you are modifying Core TCA, you usually don't have to worry about that. Since custom extensions are always loaded after the Core's TCA, changes from custom extensions will usually take effect without any special measures.

Important

If your extension modifies another extension, you actively need to make sure your extension is loaded after the extension you are modifying. This can be achieved by registering that other extension as a dependency (or suggestion) of yours. See the description of constraints in Core APIs.

Loading order also matters if you have multiple extensions overriding the same field, probably even contradicting each other.

For more information about an extension's structure, please refer to the extension architecture chapter in Core APIs.

Storing in the overrides folder

Since TYPO3 v6.2 (v6.2.1 to be precise) changes to $GLOBALS['TCA'] must be stored inside a folder called Configuration/TCA/Overrides. For clarity files should be named along the pattern <tablename>.php.

Thus if you want to customize the TCA of tx_foo_domain_model_bar, you'd create the file Configuration/TCA/Overrides/tx_foo_domain_model_bar.php.

The advantage of this method is that all such changes are incorporated into $GLOBALS['TCA'] before it is cached. This is thus far more efficient.

Note

All files within Configuration/TCA/Overrides will be loaded, you are not forced to have a single file for table "tt_content" for instance. When dealing with custom content elements this file can get 1000+ lines very quickly and maintainability can get hard quickly as well. Also names don't matter in that folder, at least not to TYPO3. They only might influence loading order. Proper naming is only relevant for the real definition of tables one folder up in Configuration/TCA

Important

Be aware that you cannot extend the TCA of extensions if it was configured within its ext_tables.php file, usually containing the "ctrl" section referencing a "dynamicConfigFile". Please ask the extension author to switch to the Configuration/TCA/<tablename>.php setup.

Important

Only TCA-related changes should go into Configuration/TCA/Overrides files. Some API calls may be okay as long as they also manipulate only $GLOBALS['TCA']. For example, it is fine to register a plugin with \TYPO3\CMS\Core\Utility\ExtensionManagementUtility::addPlugin() in Configuration/TCA/Overrides/tt_content.php because that API call only modifies $GLOBALS['TCA'] for table "tt_content".

Storing in ext_tables.php files

Until TYPO3 v6.1 (still supported for v6.2) changes to $GLOBALS['TCA'] are packaged into an extension's ext_tables.php file. This is strongly discouraged in more recent versions of TYPO3.

Nowadays the only usecase for TCA changes in ext_tables.php is to override TCA definitions done in the ext_tables.php of a legacy extension. TCA overrides cannot be used in this case until the author of the legacy extension migrates his code.

Changing the TCA "on the fly"

It is also possible to perform some special manipulations on $GLOBALS['TCA'] right before it is stored into cache, thanks to the PSR-14 event AfterTcaCompilationEvent.