10 New BuildAModule Videos on Views and Contextual Filters
Backing up our project (Backup 8) - 0:39
We don't want to lose all we've built, so we're going to take a minute and make a backup (whew, that was close!).
(FREE!) Why to display a single piece of content with Views, installing Views, and why we're building the same view 3 times - 3:10
After demonstrating the number of other ways we can display a block of fields on our product review pages, why are we looking now at Views to do the same thing? Well, views gives us some additional tools to work with, and it's also what many Drupal shops use as a standard for creating such blocks so it's good to be in the know. We're not going to leave it at that, though. We're actually going to be re-building this block a few times using different views configurations. Once you get done with this process, you're going to know some serious Views-fu.
How to group views displays, and how to decide what entity to base a view on - 5:29
This video is rather conceptual but also brings up two very important points about how you architecture your views. Do you group together multiple views displays or use individual views for each display? And when you have a choice between multiple entities, how do you decide which type of entity to base the view off of? If you don't understand why these questions are important yet, go through the next 50 videos or so and then come back.
How to fill in the views wizard to create a block - 1:46
As the first step in building our view, we fill out the views wizard tool. Nothing too complicated here, though the questions it brings up were surprisingly deep.
(FREE!) How contextual filters work in the Views module - 1:51
One of the big strengths of Views is the ability to use contextual filters, which are ways that we can narrow down the content we display with information that's not available to us in the entities we're displaying. Here, we're getting the node ID (nid) from the URL, but we also talk about a couple other use cases.
How to add a views contextual filter for the node currently being viewed - 2:27
In this video we add our first (of many) contextual filter to grab the node ID of the node currently being viewed. It's not so hard, but it's also a smidgin less than intuitive, so it's good to have someone holding your hand this first time around.
How to preview a view with a contextual filter - 1:23
Now that we've added a contextual filter, it looks like we've broken our view based on what we're seeing in the preview area. But, never fear, it's just that now we need to give Views something to fill in that filter with. In this video we demonstrate how to do that.
How to display a full node in a views block - 3:48
So far we've been using fields in our views, but we often times it's simpler simply to display a full node and pick the appropriate view mode. In this video we do exactly that.
In this video we discuss the importance of making sure a block is set to not display even when it has no content, and how we can show a block just for certain node types using the default block configuration page.
How to display a block for certain node types using Context - 1:37
In the previous video, we displayed a block on node pages of a certain type using the default blocks configuration page. In this video we do the same thing with the Context module.
