Views Demystified (2 hours)
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Sign In Are you wondering why you might use the Views module? If you should use the Views module? Wondering how “Filters” and “Sorting” and “Fields” can be used to easily create the sophisticated content presentation you seek?
This session proposal is targeted for beginners and intermediate users who are still figuring out how to understand the basics of views. We will stick to the views UI, delve into basic strategies for using views, and explore how the simple, non-code based tools within views can be used to create sophisticated results.
(Note to advanced users: Blake Lucchesi proposed a cool session: Theming with Views, which you might want to check out.)
Specific Goals
- Including how looking at the blocks controls to set user and page rules
Modules That Will Come Into Play
The following modules play an important role in the techniques that will be discussed above.
- Views (obviously :)
- Views Rotator (for cool slide-show type effect)
- CCK – won’t go into depth on this one, but basically essential to truly harnessing the full coolness of Views
- Taxonomy (part of core) – won’t go into depth on this one either, but will need to take a quick look in order to harness more Views coolness
Additional
If there is time and interest near the end of the session, we’ll take a look at some core css theming tactics to use when theming views. In order to focus this effort, we’ll stick to the following tools for this examination:
- Using Firebug to identify relevant class tags
- Using a Zen Sub-theme stylesheet
- Using “Re-write output” in views to add inline CSS when necessary
- Login to post comments
Comments
thanks for your suggestion re: showing results on specific days!
stevethewebguy: thanks for your suggestion about showing results on specific days. Also, overdue responses to your two questions:
Q) What was the thing you did to set up a search box for visitors to search the view?
When you set up filters, add one under the search category labeled “Search:Search Terms”
This then gives you a search field that users can use!
Q) Do you know if you can sub-group views? So for example, if you were grouping by content type and one of the groups was festivals – but you also wanted to group the festivals by type; art & music for example… Could/would that be done by one big view, or would it be best to just create a festivals view that was grouped by festival type? And if so, would/could you then make a view that pulled in that view? Geeze, I hope that makes sense:)
It sounds like what you want to do is possible with views, but I’m not sure if I completely understand exactly what your scenario is.
If your specific scenario is not doable with one view, there is a helper module that is great for blending views: Insert View
http://drupal.org/project/insert_view
That might be more in line with where you are trying to go.
Thanks for a great session
I’ve used Views before, but I never felt like I was fully wrapping my brain around it. Now everything is clicking and I’ll feel much more confident about using it. Thanks so much!
Views Were Demystified!
Great session, a terrific use of two hours, which probably saved me hours of looking through documents/books on the subject.
Very clear, well thought through and Rain’s delivery was excellent.
Thanks for all you work and a great session.
Great session, I really enjoyed it!
I have a few questions and a comment:
Q) What was the thing you did to set up a search box for visitors to search the view? I know how to expose stuff, but I must have just missed a step when you set up that filter or whatever (My laptop was power thirsty & I had to re-situate mid-lecture :)
Q) Do you know if you can sub-group views? So for example, if you were grouping by content type and one of the groups was festivals – but you also wanted to group the festivals by type; art & music for example… Could/would that be done by one big view, or would it be best to just create a festivals view that was grouped by festival type? And if so, would/could you then make a view that pulled in that view? Geeze, I hope that makes sense:)
C) When you were demoing the random sort order feature, someone mentioned wanting to set up a view that would display different/specific results on different/specific days. To do that I would probably add a day field to the content type (date/day of the week or however you wanted to control when they display) and then argue the current date/day of the week to the view using the PHP input.
Thanks again Rain!
Drupalchix rock!
Best Session for me
I just wanted to say thanks for such a great session! This was exactly what I needed before I felt comfortable with getting my feet wet with Views. That control panel for the module is no longer intimidating to me at all.
The link from the end of the presentation
Great presentation:
This is the links from the end of the presentation:
http://sunrainproductions.com/drupalcampla
Thanks!
if you are planning to go to "CCK Demystified"
Definitely make sure to do this VIEWS session as well!
check out CCK Demystified!
dougvann is offering a session that will go great with this one:
CCK Demystified
Understanding CCK will enable you to go that much further with views!
CCK and Image Handling Session
Thank you ChristofWeberfor pointing this out! These two sessions (“Views Demystified” and “Image Handling”) would go quite nicely together for a beginner or intermediate user interested in putting together a really cool layout.
Very cool
Glad to see a Views session aimed at noobs and intermediate users. Every Drupal noob hears the magic words CCK and Views, but rarely has a clear idea what the buzz is about, and the project pages at drupal.org aren’t much help for the newcomer either.
You mention that you won’t go into depth with CCK. My session Image Handling the Sane Way falls way short on the Views side, but does cover many aspects of CCK by way of example. So it looks like our two sessions together make a nice package. I have added a link from mine to here to help people pick both.