AI Text Summarization for Drupal 11 Using PHP and OpenAI API

Drupal's body field has a built-in summary subfield that almost nobody fills in properly. On high-volume editorial sites I've worked on, it's either blank, copy-pasted from the first paragraph, or written by someone who clearly didn't read the article. It shows up in teasers, RSS feeds, and meta descriptions, so bad summaries actually hurt.

The fix is straightforward. Hook into hook_entity_presave, grab the body content, send it to OpenAI, write the result back into body->summary before the node hits the database. Editors never have to touch it, and the summaries are actually coherent.

This is a single-file custom module. No services, no config forms, no dependencies beyond cURL. If you want to wire it up properly with Drupal's config system later you can, but this gets you running in under 20 minutes.

Step 1: Create a Custom Module

Create a new module called ai_summary.

Inside that folder, create two files:

• ai_summary.info.yml
• ai_summary.module

ai_summary.info.yml

Add the below code in the info.yml file.

   name: AI Summary
   type: module
   description: Automatically generate summaries for Drupal nodes using OpenAI API.
   core_version_requirement: ^11
   package: Custom
   version: 1.0.0

ai_summary.module

This is where the logic lives.

To run our code just before a node is saved we will use hook_entity_presave of Drupal.

use Drupal\node\Entity\Node;
use Drupal\Core\Entity\EntityInterface;

/**
* Implements hook_entity_presave().
*/
function ai_summary_entity_presave(EntityInterface $entity) {
    if ($entity->getEntityTypeId() !== 'node') {
        return;
    }

    // Only summarize articles (you can change this as needed)
    if ($entity->bundle() !== 'article') {
        return;
    }

    $body = $entity->get('body')->value ?? '';
    if (empty($body)) {
        return;
    }

    // Generate AI summary
    $summary = ai_summary_generate_summary($body);

    if ($summary) {
        // Save it in the summary field
        $entity->get('body')->summary = $summary;
    }
}

/**
* Generate summary using OpenAI API.
*/
function ai_summary_generate_summary($text) {
    $api_key = 'YOUR_OPENAI_API_KEY';
    $endpoint = 'https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions';

    $payload = [
        "model" => "gpt-4o-mini",
        "messages" => [
        ["role" => "system", "content" => "Summarize the following text in 2-3 sentences. Keep it concise and human-readable."],
        ["role" => "user", "content" => $text]
        ],
        "temperature" => 0.7
    ];

    $ch = curl_init($endpoint);
    curl_setopt_array($ch, [
        CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
        CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => [
        "Content-Type: application/json",
        "Authorization: Bearer {$api_key}"
        ],
        CURLOPT_POST => true,
        CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => json_encode($payload),
        CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 15
    ]);

    $response = curl_exec($ch);
    curl_close($ch);

    $data = json_decode($response, true);
    return trim($data['choices'][0]['message']['content'] ?? '');
}

This functionality performs three primary functions:

• Identifies article saving in Drupal.
• Sends the content to OpenAI to be summarized.
• The summary is stored in the body summary field of the article.

Step 2: Enable the Module

1. Place the new module folder directly in /modules/custom/.
2. In Drupal Admin panel, go to: Extend → Install new module (or Enable module).
3. Check AI Summary and turn it on.

Step 3: Test the AI Summary

1. Select Content -> Add content -> Article.
2. Enter the long paragraph in the body field.
3. Save the article.
4. On reloading the page, open it one more time — the summary field will be already filled automatically.

Example:

Input Body:

Artificial Intelligence has been changing how developers build and deploy applications...

Generated Summary:

AI is reshaping software development by automating repetitive tasks and improving decision-making through data-driven insights.

Step 4: Extend It Further

The following are some of the ideas that can be used to improve the module:

• Add settings: Add a form to enable the user to add the API key and the select the type of model.
• Queue processing: Queue processing Use the drugndrup queue API to process the existing content in batches.
• Custom field storage: Store summaries in object now: field_ai_summary.
• Views integration: Show or hide articles in terms of length of summary or its presence.

Security & Performance Tips

• Never hardcode your API key but keep it in the configuration or in the.env file of Drupal.
• Shorten long text in order to send (OpenAI token limit = cost).
• Gracefully manage API timeouts.
• Watchdoging errors to log API.