Full introduction to Views in Drupal 8

• Installing Acquia Dev Desktop

Acquia Dev Desktop contains

• Apache

• MySQL

• PHP

And enables us to install Drupal with several clicks

• Install Drupal locally

• Download the Devel module

• Activate the Devel Generate module

• Growing some content using the Devel generate module

• Interface for building lists of content

• a query builder

• a tool with which you may create dynamic listings

• Documentation version:

The Views module allows administrators and site designers to create, manage, and display lists of content.  Each list managed by the Views module is known as a view, and the output of a view is known as a display.

You need Views if

• You like the default front page view, but you find you want to sort it differently.

• You want to add column to the Content overview page

• You want to add a filter to the Content overview page

• You want a way to display a block with the 5 most recent posts of some particular type.

• You want to create a new page with a list of some content

• You want to create some list with users, either as a block or as a page

Lets see some examples to gain a better idea about what Views is

• Front page

• Admin Content page

• Admin People page

• Taxonomies Overview pages

We have a list of all the Views under Structure > Views

• that’s the Views UI

• here we can edit the existing ones and later add new

you may edit their look and structure as you like …

• Lets see what are we actually fetching ?

• What is an Entity

      - building blocks, having unified structure

      - fieldable

• Example entities are:

     - Nodes

     - Users

     - Taxonomy terms, etc

•    Let’s check the Node types that we have and their fields

• Creating our first view

• Creating our first display

• Views and Displays

• Display Type - page

• Left column

      - format and fields, filters and sorts

      - Middle column

      - settings, header, footer, pager

• Advanced

      - contextual filters, relations, caching and other nudges

First two are the kings:

• Page

• Blocks

And some more out of the box:

• Attachment

• Entity Reference

• Feed

• Embed

• What is formats

     -  the way we want to render our list

     - represents the HTML format that would be generated

• There are some combinations of Formats and Row styles that make no sense at all

• That’s why I introduce the good ones as recipes

• Mostly being used for administration pages

• Sortable columns

• Edit and drop buttons are for here

• Let’s see an example!

• Rendering either as Unordered or as Ordered list

• Let’s see an example

View mode ( or Display Mode ) ?

• existing

• activating another one

• Using it in a View ( the Teaser Display Mode )

• Let’s nudge a bit

     - change some formatters

     - remove some fields

The default one is the detail view of the Entity.

If needed we may create a new one.

• Number of columns

• Alignment

• Some default classes

• The one that I personally use the most

• Is just default div wrappers so it is general enough

We have a list. Let’s filter it !

• Status

• Type

• Search

• Language

• Filter on term

Letting the user interact with the list

• Filter as select

• Filter as multiple select

• Searching with form input

• Combine

More:

• Change operator

• Change the Name of the filterable field

• Change the parameter value

• We could also easily put it to another block (will show you that later)

• How the filters are interacting with each other

• Filter groups

• Rearrange

• Example

Sort that those results!

• Publish date

• Sorting by sticky on top of the lists

• Title Alphabetical

Show stuff on top or at the bottom of our View.

• Result summary

• Free text that we want to show

• Empty node Frontpage behaviour

• Render another view

• Same for “No results behavior”

Yes we may nudge that too!

• Specified number of items

• Display all items

• Full pager

• Mini pager (much faster)

Let’s briefly check Drupal 8 permissions:

• What are drupal users

• Roles

• Permissions

Let’s apply some to our View!

• Access based on Permissions

• Access based on Roles

• Related to the current node or taxonomy

• Related in a way to the current logged in user

• Some custom field correlation

• Default value

• Apply validation criteria

• Multiple values

• Example

That’s basically SQL joins

Why do we need that

• Introduces new fields that we may use

Let’s make an example use case:

• A reference to another entity - per say a User

• A field that exists only there

• Show the e-mail of the author

• Basic and input required  - is about the starting point

• Adding a reset button

• Changing some form labels

• Some words about Drupal Blocks

• Expose our exposed filters to a block form

• Put it in the sidebar

• What is Ajax ?

• Let’s activate it

• Ajaxed pager

• Ajaxed exposed filters

• What is Caching ?

• Tag based

• Time based

• Views settings

• Don’t apply to all most of the time (be careful)

• Organize to make your life and the life of your co-workers easier

• Clone a display to something else (a wonderful feature)

• Clone a whole view

• Choose the root path

• Page title

• Create a fields page

• Access for the page

• Adding to the Menu

• Block name

• Build our view

• Block specific settings

• Blocks overview and placing our block

• Tricky part - settings in the block.

• Let’s show the first 3 results a bit better

• Let’s apply it to a page

• Attachment position

• Inherit filters

• Some words about Drupal fields

• Let’s create an Entity Reference field

• Let’s create a Entity Reference view

• Filter the referenced items proposals