Drupal 5 Views Recipes

In Detail

The Drupal View modules give you flexibility and freedom to customize the display of your web site's content. Although there are more than 100 views-enabled modules, few site administrators use Drupal Views to its full potential.

This book will enable you to realize the fullest potential of this powerful resource by providing a wide variety of powerful recipes for creating and displaying a wide variety of views - essential classics you will use again and again to innovative display methods that will make your Drupal site stand out. Pick and choose the ones you would like to prepare for your web site.

In this book you will find ninety-four recipes to create a wide selection of views. The list includes event listings, interactive calendars and timelines, maps, proximity search, podcasting, carousels, Views Fusion, and many more. You will also explore default views, views with CCK, and master a variety of ways to associate views with related content.

Most people think of Views for site visitors. But Views can also be handy for site administrators. You will get to know the Views Bulk Operations module, along with Editable Fields, and Views Custom Fields. (You'll probably wonder why you never used them before!)

If you want to take Views to the next level, the book contains a code-rich chapter on theming. However, you will find most of the recipes detailed by the author do not require any original coding at all.

As you progress through the recipes, you will be immersed in such Drupal Views topics as fields, arguments, filters, exposed filters, sorting, style plug-ins, formatters, cloning and copying views.

Because Drupal is a worldwide and ever adapting system, the author also includes great tips and resources for navigating the online Drupal community and expanding your knowledge of the recipes.

Finally, there is an extensive Appendix, which includes listings of all default views, formatters and style plug-ins for Drupal 5, along with a categorized list of patches.

Approach

This book will give you a long list of powerful recipes. Choose the ones that suit your needs and use them through step-by-step instructions. Most of the recipes are code-free, but a number of the recipes contain code snippets.

Who this book is for

This book is primarily written for Drupal site builders, administrators, and themers who want to develop custom content displays using Views. It can be used by anyone who has a Drupal 5 web site, including original site developers as well as people who have inherited a Drupal 5 site.

Some knowledge of HTML and CSS is required; PHP basics will be handy for some of the recipes.