Grayside.Org - views

Infinite Null: Sorting NULL to Last

Grayside — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 04:01:43 +0000

Please, keep in mind this post was written for Drupal 6 and Views 2! D7/Views 3 sites might not take so kindly to it.

Recently I was looking at creating a new Todo Feature with a due date. I cracked open CCK’s manage fields UI and added a date field, careful to keep in mind that the default value should be no date, which just happens to translate as NULL. You see, for my Todo use case, not all Todos would have a deadline.

My next step was to create a View of all upcoming items. I wanted the next most urgent todo to float to the top of the list. Sadly, NULL counts as 0 in database land, so my carefully clicked Sort was preloading all my urgent todos with all the lowest priority tasks.

Seeing as this was a SQL problem, I googled the ‘net for viable query tweaks. I found a nice article illustrating exactly what I wanted: MySQL Sort Order with NULL. The grand secret? Sort first by whether the duedate is NULL to flip your empty values to the bottom of the result set.

The fastest way for me to apply this tweak to my feature was to hack the Views query. hook_views_query_alter() is usually a horrible decision. Once you’ve put it into code, tweaking your View a lot around your alteration can quickly result in a broken query. Meanwhile:

/**
 * Implementation of hook_views_query_alter().
 */
function example_views_query_alter(&$view, &$query) {
  if ($view->name == 'example_listing') {
    array_unshift($query->orderby, 'ISNULL(node_data_field_duedate_field_duedate_value) ASC');
  }
}

(For a longer use case on this Views bandaid, see Correcting views queries using views_query_alter)

I arrived here by turning on the Devel module, and dropping a dpm($query) into that function first thing. This gave me the array structure of my View, including the various SQL entries for the ORDER BY arguments. A quick and dirty array_unshift() forces the NULL check for my date field (the alias I also found in the $query object, there are more elegant methods) onto the top of the ordering hierarchy.

Bingo! NULL-dated nodes are sorted to last.

Terms:

How to Override a Views Field Template from a Module

Grayside — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 21:07:05 +0000

Some months ago I wanted the solution to overriding a Views Field template entirely from within a module. I spent hours trawling documentation and issues, and playing with a little trial and error. In the end, I came up with a solution:

/**
 * Implementation of hook_theme().
 */
function custom_module_theme($existing) {
  return array(
    'views_view_field__view_name__field_name' => array(
      'arguments' => array('view' => NULL, 'field' => NULL, 'row' => NULL),
      'template' => 'views-view-field--view-name--field-name',
      'original hook' => 'views_view_field',
      'path' => drupal_get_path('module', 'custom_module') . '/theme',
    ),
  );
}

By defining a Views template in this way, you are doing the equivalent to building your template and dropping it into your Theme’s directory. This is sufficient for Views to notice the existence of the template from within your module. At that point the standard Views logic of finding the most specific template available for each field comes into play. In this case, every instance of field name in view name will use this template… unless, of course, I have a more specific template somewhere that targets that field in a specific display.

Note that the theme key and template name are the same, but for the swapping of hyphens and underscores. The way both of those are named is critical, else Views will not properly notice the template. All the options listed in Theme Information in the Views UI is available for use here.

Note that this is very derivative of the hard work of others, and I will link to it here when I come across it again.

views template overrides in module directory was one of my key references. Since I checked that thread, the marvelous @dereine posted a patch with the intent to guide Views to find theme templates in module directories as well. It Needs Review, so if the code above bores you, go review the patch!

Terms:

drupal

views

theming

Adding a Content Type to the Open Atrium Calendar Views

Grayside — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 23:04:50 +0000

People often seem to wonder how they can get their new date-specified content types to show up on the Atrium Calendar. The following Views snippet makes it happen for a content type called “example_type” in module “custom”. Note that this code is specific to the Views as they were renamed for Kit-compatibility in Open Atrium 1.0-beta8.

Step 1

Build your “example_type” content type. You can build this out however you want, but for the purpose of this post you need to add the same field_date that the Event type uses.

Step 2

/**
 * Implementation of hook_views_default_views_alter().
 */
function custom_views_default_views_alter(&$views) {
  $views['calendar_listing']->display['default']->display_options['filters']['type']['value']['example_type'] = 'example_type';
  $views['calendar_upcoming']->display['default']->display_options['filters']['type']['value']['example_type'] = 'example_type';
}

Why Not Override the View with Views UI?

Once you have overridden the core Views in Atrium, you take a potentially stressful upgrade/maintenance path and make it vaguely nightmarish. Your changes will disappear into the ether when you upgrade. Restoring your changes would require building out a site based on a backup database to grab the key pieces of your override.

By keeping these changes in code, you can much more easily determine how to fix them… assuming any changes are even necessary!

Happy calendar hooking.

Terms:

openatrium

views

calendar

Optional Spaces Integration for a View

Grayside — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 21:05:02 +0000

If you want to make an exported [node-based] View smoothly integrate with Spaces, you can use the following code to modify the View structure with the “Content in current space” filter. This filter does nothing if the View is not itself in a Space, otherwise it restricts all results to content in the same space. Add any conditions you want to control whether the Spaces integration is applied.

/**
 * Implementation of hook_views_default_views_alter().
 */ 
function custom_views_default_views_alter(&$views) {
  if (module_exists('spaces')) {
    $views['view_name_here']->display['default']->display_options['filters']['current'] = array(
      'operator' => 'all',
      'value' => '',
      'group' => '0',
      'exposed' => FALSE,
      'expose' => array(
        'operator' => FALSE,
        'label' => '',
      ),
      'id' => 'current',
      'table' => 'spaces',
      'field' => 'current',
      'relationship' => 'none',
    );
  }
}

If you would like to take it a step further, and create OpenAtrium features integration, insert the following:

$views['view_name_here']->display['default']->display_options['access'] = array(
  'type' => 'atrium_feature',
  'spaces_feature' => 'feature_name',
  'perm' => 'access content', // or any other permission
);

hook_views_default_views_alter() fires off before the View is cached, so be sure to clear your cache after adding this code to see the results.

This code snippet is a finding from my work on OpenAtrium-FeatureServer integration.

Terms:

drupal

views

spaces

Changing Node Group Audience

Grayside — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 18:33:31 +0000

In OpenAtrium, it’s not easy to change the group affiliation of a node once it has been created. OA locks down the interface to set group audience specifically to make the interface easier to understand.

I have just posted a quick feature that demonstrates how to grant administrators the ability to shuffle nodes around between groups, it can be found in the issue queue at community.OA.

It introduces two things–a new Action that toggles the group audience of a given node, and a Views Bulk Operations View that allows you to apply that action to batches.

There is a special column in the View labeled “Member of Private Group”. This column lets the administrator know whether the current group is a private group, meaning the content is almost certainly private as well. Any quality of the group a node starts in will be lost once you move a node to a new group, and that includes whether it is private content. Remember that, and use with care!

Note: If you preface the URL of the View with a group namespace, it will limit the content to the nodes of that group.

Download feature from my Features Server here

Terms:

OpenAtrium Empty Views: Gimme That Button!

Grayside — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 17:28:14 +0000

Do you like the large gray “Add Blog entry” button when you first visit your blog space, and have yet to create anything? Creating views with similar buttons (or adding more) is really easy!

The key is to create Empty text in your view using the Full HTML Input Format. Then, drop some HTML in like this to make use of Atrium’s built-in theming.

<div class="buttons">
  <ul class="links">
    <li class="first last">
      <a href="/node/add/blog">Add Blog entry</a>
    </li>
  </ul>
</div>

Terms:

Public Facing Site through Secured Syndication

Grayside — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 01:06:05 +0000

When you need to stack content access mechanisms together in Drupal, things can get pretty messy. When you add Organic Groups to the mix, it gets pretty wild. I’ve been faced more than once with the challenge of building a site that would be 90% internal, and 10% public. Unfortunately, than 10% of public content represents 50% of the site’s complexity, especially when configuring around the settings and functionality required for a nice Intranet.

I hate to bow out from the challenge, but in this morass, there is no clean and quick answer. The best solution might be the easiest. How about content syndication?

Half the challenge here is to allow internal users to create and view all the content they care about in the same place. On occasion, content is created that is at least partially for public consumption. Rather than send content creators (and interested internal personnel) off to a site not meant for them, how about setting up a completely separate, public-facing site. One that emphasizes public information, and pulls it’s primary content from the internal site?

The only problem is how we get around that access complication so this other site can read the feed.

I have one recipe that (mostly) works, and one I have yet to try.

Tokenauth

Install the Token Authentication module. Tokenauth is a nifty module that maintains the assignment of an alphanumeric token to every user of your site. With that token appended to a URL, it will operate as a one-off login. This would be frightening for security, except the pages accessible in this way are also configured, after the fashion of block visibility path settings.
Configure the allowed paths to a single content export root path. For example, public/* or export/*.
Install the Flag module. Create a flag attached to all the content types whose content you may want to expose, and label this flag “Make it Public”.
Create a View. Create a Relationship on the flag you built in Step 3, and Require it. Create a Feed display. Set the path to public. And save.
Create a fake user with legitimate access to view the content. If possible, make sure the only access this account has, is viewing that content. Take note of the tokenauth token assigned to this user.
Build your public website. 7.

Terms: