Drupal 7: Relationships, Contextual Filters and Field Rewriting in Views 3

Drupal 7 Views: Mastering Relationships, Contextual Filters, and Field Rewriting

This article delves into advanced Drupal 7 Views techniques, focusing on relationships, contextual filters, and field rewriting. Building upon a basic understanding of Views creation, we'll enhance functionality to create more dynamic and customized displays.

Key Concepts:

• Relationships: Join tables to retrieve data from related entities. For example, linking articles to their authors.
• Contextual Filters: Dynamically filter Views based on context like URLs or the logged-in user.
• Field Rewriting: Concatenate field values to create complex, customized field outputs, ideal for theming.

Let's enhance a simple article View displaying only titles with three improvements:

1. Display the article author's username.
2. Show only articles authored by the logged-in user.
3. Display the author's username in parentheses after the title.

1. Establishing Relationships:

The node table contains only the author's User ID (uid). To display the username, we need a relationship to the user table. Add a new relationship of type "Content: Author," giving it a descriptive name like "Content Author." Leave other settings at their defaults.

Now, add a "User: Name" field. The "Relationship" setting will automatically select "Content Author," indicating the field's data is pulled via the established relationship. Saving adds the author's username to the View preview. Relationships can be chained to join multiple tables.

2. Implementing Contextual Filters:

Contextual filters function similarly to regular filters but derive their values from context, not manual input. Add a contextual filter of type "Content: Author uid." Under "WHEN THE FILTER VALUE IS NOT IN THE URL," select "Provide default value" and choose "User ID from logged in user" as the type. This dynamically filters the View to show only articles by the currently logged-in user.

3. Rewriting Fields for Enhanced Output:

To combine the title and author's username, rearrange fields so the title is last. This is because field rewriting uses tokens from preceding fields. Edit the author username field, uncheck "Create a label," and check "Exclude from display."

Next, edit the title field and check "Rewrite the output of this field." Use the replacement patterns (e.g., [title], [name]) within the rewrite text area. To achieve the desired output, use:

<code>[title] ([name])</code>

However, this might break linking if the "Link this field to the original piece of content" is checked. To maintain clean linking, add a "Content: Path" field (exclude from display), place it before the title, and rewrite the title field as:

<code><a href="https://www.php.cn/link/fc0fef626c330003179e5377ee02750f">[title]</a> ([name])</code>

This ensures the title links correctly, while the username (in parentheses) links to the user profile.

Conclusion:

This tutorial covered relationships, contextual filters, and field rewriting in Drupal 7 Views. Mastering these techniques empowers you to create highly dynamic and customized Views, significantly enhancing your site's functionality. The complexity of Views is mitigated by understanding these core concepts.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs):

The provided FAQs section remains largely unchanged, as it accurately addresses common questions regarding Drupal 7 Views and contextual filters. The information is consistent and helpful to users.

The above is the detailed content of Drupal 7: Relationships, Contextual Filters and Field Rewriting in Views 3. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!