Putting views into site-specific modules
When moving back and forth between development and production on database driven websites, you begin to realize that using SQL dumps to accomplish replication of your development changes can get ugly very quickly. For smaller changes you can manually replicate the changes, but that requires remembering each and every (successful) step you did in development, and recreating those steps in the appropriate order in production so as to integrate the new changes with no or very little disruption to the end user. One of the options to ease this process is to put all of the changes you make in development into a module. This includes, but is not limited to, views, content types, and blocks. In the example below, I'll show you how to put views content into a module that your site can use. Two other added benefits of putting views content into code is that you can now version your changes in your favorite SCM and from a performance standpoint, putting views into code improves page load times.
After you've created your desired changes using the views module, enable the "Views exporter" module under the "Views" section of the module page. If you're using Drush, simply type
drush enable views_export
Navigate back to the Views administration page. Click the "Tools" button, then "Bulk Export". You can then select the views that you want to include in your module. Type in a name for your new module and click "Export".
Views will then give you the code to replicate your views that are currently stored in the database.
To start building your module you'll need a folder to contain the module and three files. First create the folder for your module and store it in sites/all/modules. If you're in the habit of storing your modules in the /modules folder, moving your modules to sites/all/modules makes life a lot easier when you go to upgrade your site.
Next, create a modulename.info file and include this code first.
; $Id: $ name = modulename Export Module description = Exports some views of modulename dependencies[] = views core = 6.x
Then create a modulename.module file and include the following code.
<?php
/**
* Implementation of hook_views_api().
*/
function modulename_views_api() {
return array(
'api' => 2,
'path' => drupal_get_path('module', 'modulename'),
//'path' => drupal_get_path('module', 'modulename') . '/includes',
);
}
Note that there is no closing php tag. Including the closing php tag can cause errors when the code is aggregated as the site loads.
The last file you'll need will be the modulename.views_default_inc.inc. This file should go in the sites/all/modules/modulename/includes directory.
<?php
/**
* Implementation of hook_views_default_views().
*/
function modulename_views_default_views() {
/*
* View 'News'
*/
$view = new view;
$view->name = 'News';
$view->description = 'Page and blocks for news items';
$view->tag = '';
$view->view_php = '';
$view->base_table = 'node';
$view->is_cacheable = FALSE;
$view->api_version = 2;
$view->disabled = FALSE; /* Edit this to true to make a default view disabled initially */
$handler = $view->new_display('default', 'Defaults', 'default');
$handler->override_option('fields', array(
'title' => array(
'label' => '',
'alter' => array(
'alter_text' => 0,
'text' => '',
'make_link' => 0,
'path' => '',
'link_class' => '',
'alt' => '',
'prefix' => '',
'suffix' => '',
'target' => '',
'help' => '',
'trim' => 0,
'max_length' => '',
'word_boundary' => 1,
'ellipsis' => 1,
'strip_tags' => 0,
'html' => 0,
),
'empty' => '',
'hide_empty' => 0,
'empty_zero' => 0,
'link_to_node' => 0,
'exclude' => 0,
'id' => 'title',
'table' => 'node',
'field' => 'title',
'relationship' => 'none',
),
'body' => array(
'label' => '',
'alter' => array(
'alter_text' => 0,
'text' => '',
'make_link' => 0,
'path' => '',
'link_class' => '',
'alt' => '',
'prefix' => '',
'suffix' => '',
'target' => '',
'help' => '',
'trim' => 0,
'max_length' => '',
'word_boundary' => 1,
'ellipsis' => 1,
'strip_tags' => 0,
'html' => 0,
),
'empty' => '',
'hide_empty' => 0,
'empty_zero' => 0,
'exclude' => 0,
'id' => 'body',
'table' => 'node_revisions',
'field' => 'body',
'relationship' => 'none',
),
));
$handler->override_option('filters', array(
'tid' => array(
'operator' => 'or',
'value' => array(
'10' => '10',
),
'group' => '0',
'exposed' => FALSE,
'expose' => array(
'operator' => FALSE,
'label' => '',
),
'type' => 'select',
'limit' => TRUE,
'vid' => '3',
'id' => 'tid',
'table' => 'term_node',
'field' => 'tid',
'hierarchy' => 0,
'relationship' => 'none',
'reduce_duplicates' => 0,
),
));
$handler->override_option('access', array(
'type' => 'none',
));
$handler->override_option('cache', array(
'type' => 'none',
));
$handler = $view->new_display('page', 'Page', 'page_1');
$handler->override_option('fields', array(
'title' => array(
'label' => '',
'alter' => array(
'alter_text' => 0,
'text' => '',
'make_link' => 0,
'path' => '',
'link_class' => '',
'alt' => '',
'prefix' => '',
'suffix' => '',
'target' => '',
'help' => '',
'trim' => 0,
'max_length' => '',
'word_boundary' => 1,
'ellipsis' => 1,
'strip_tags' => 0,
'html' => 0,
),
'empty' => '',
'hide_empty' => 0,
'empty_zero' => 0,
'link_to_node' => 0,
'exclude' => 0,
'id' => 'title',
'table' => 'node',
'field' => 'title',
'relationship' => 'none',
),
'body' => array(
'label' => '',
'alter' => array(
'alter_text' => 0,
'text' => '',
'make_link' => 0,
'path' => '',
'link_class' => '',
'alt' => '',
'prefix' => '',
'suffix' => '',
'target' => '',
'help' => '',
'trim' => 0,
'max_length' => '',
'word_boundary' => 1,
'ellipsis' => 1,
'strip_tags' => 0,
'html' => 0,
),
'empty' => '',
'hide_empty' => 0,
'empty_zero' => 0,
'exclude' => 0,
'id' => 'body',
'table' => 'node_revisions',
'field' => 'body',
'override' => array(
'button' => 'Use default',
),
'relationship' => 'none',
),
));
$handler->override_option('path', 'news');
$handler->override_option('menu', array(
'type' => 'none',
'title' => '',
'description' => '',
'weight' => 0,
'name' => 'navigation',
));
$handler->override_option('tab_options', array(
'type' => 'none',
'title' => '',
'description' => '',
'weight' => 0,
));
$handler = $view->new_display('block', 'Block', 'block_1');
$handler->override_option('fields', array(
'title' => array(
'label' => '',
'alter' => array(
'alter_text' => 0,
'text' => '',
'make_link' => 0,
'path' => '',
'link_class' => '',
'alt' => '',
'prefix' => '',
'suffix' => '',
'target' => '',
'help' => '',
'trim' => 0,
'max_length' => '',
'word_boundary' => 1,
'ellipsis' => 1,
'strip_tags' => 0,
'html' => 0,
),
'empty' => '',
'hide_empty' => 0,
'empty_zero' => 0,
'link_to_node' => 0,
'exclude' => 0,
'id' => 'title',
'table' => 'node',
'field' => 'title',
'relationship' => 'none',
),
'teaser' => array(
'label' => '',
'alter' => array(
'alter_text' => 0,
'text' => '',
'make_link' => 0,
'path' => '',
'link_class' => '',
'alt' => '',
'prefix' => '',
'suffix' => '',
'target' => '',
'help' => '',
'trim' => 0,
'max_length' => '',
'word_boundary' => 1,
'ellipsis' => 1,
'strip_tags' => 0,
'html' => 0,
),
'empty' => '',
'hide_empty' => 0,
'empty_zero' => 0,
'exclude' => 0,
'id' => 'teaser',
'table' => 'node_revisions',
'field' => 'teaser',
'override' => array(
'button' => 'Use default',
),
'relationship' => 'none',
),
'view_node' => array(
'label' => '',
'alter' => array(
'alter_text' => 0,
'text' => '',
'make_link' => 0,
'path' => '',
'link_class' => '',
'alt' => '',
'prefix' => '',
'suffix' => '',
'target' => '',
'help' => '',
'trim' => 0,
'max_length' => '',
'word_boundary' => 1,
'ellipsis' => 1,
'strip_tags' => 0,
'html' => 0,
),
'empty' => '',
'hide_empty' => 0,
'empty_zero' => 0,
'text' => 'More',
'exclude' => 0,
'id' => 'view_node',
'table' => 'node',
'field' => 'view_node',
'override' => array(
'button' => 'Use default',
),
'relationship' => 'none',
),
));
$handler->override_option('block_description', '');
$handler->override_option('block_caching', -1);
$views[$view->name] = $view;
return $views;
}
If you want to understand more about the views api, exporting this code and reading through it is a good way to get a better understanding. It's fairly self explanatory and clear, and you can always experiment with different settings directly in code now that you can include these files in your version control system.