Taxonomy Hierarchy Rebuild | Module

Overview

Taxonomy Hierarchy Rebuild is a utility module for Backdrop CMS that automatically recalculates and fixes the internal hierarchical ordering fields (hweight and hdepth) for taxonomy terms.

It is designed to solve issues where newly created terms are not displayed correctly in hierarchical Views, menus, or custom templates due to missing or zero values in these fields.

The problem this module solves

Backdrop stores taxonomy hierarchy in two different ways:

1. Parent–child relationships in the table taxonomy_term_hierarchy

2. Cached numeric hierarchy data in taxonomy_term_data:

   • hdepth – depth of the term in the hierarchy

   • hweight – ordering position used by Views and other queries

In some setups (especially when using custom Views fields, hierarchy modules, multilingual taxonomies, or older contributed modules), newly created terms may end up with:

• hweight = 0

• hdepth = 0

even when the term has a parent.

This causes problems such as:

• New terms appearing at the wrong position

• Terms not showing under their parent

• Broken hierarchical menus

• Incorrect ordering in Views

• Filters and navigation menus breaking after adding a new term

What this module does

The module rebuilds correct hierarchy data by:

• Reading real parent–child relations from taxonomy_term_hierarchy

• Calculating correct depth (hdepth)

• Assigning proper ordering (hweight) while preserving existing term order

• Updating all terms in taxonomy_term_data

Features

✅ Automatically rebuilds hierarchy when:

• A term is created

• A term is edited (parent changed)

• Cron runs

✅ Manual rebuild interface:

• Admin page:
  /admin/structure/taxonomy/hierarchy-rebuild

✅ Preserves:

• Existing parent–child relationships

• Existing term ordering (taxonomy weight)

• Multilingual terms (langcode does not matter)

✅ Safe for large vocabularies

Typical use cases

This module is especially useful when using:

• Hierarchical taxonomy menus built with Views

• Custom Views templates using hdepth or hweight

• Filtering menus based on taxonomy hierarchy

• Multilingual taxonomies (i18n)

• Modules that extend taxonomy ordering

Recommended module combinations

This module is commonly needed when using setups with:

• Views

• Taxonomy

• i18n_taxonomy or multilingual vocabularies

• views_term_hierarchy_weight_field

• Custom taxonomy-based navigation menus

• Custom taxonomy Views templates

• Older Drupal → Backdrop migrated sites

It is particularly helpful if you experience hierarchy or ordering issues after:

• Adding new taxonomy terms

• Migrating from Drupal

• Enabling multilingual taxonomy

• Installing hierarchy-related contributed modules

Notes

This module does not modify:

• Term names

• Parent relationships

• Translations

• Vocabulary configuration

It only recalculates cached hierarchy fields to ensure consistent behavior across Views and menus.

 

Link for download: https://rdesign.sk/mnews/data/files/others/taxonomy_hierarchy_rebuild.zip