How to run your own query through Views 1.x
This is something you might not ALWAYS want to do, however you could find this useful in terms of using the Views theming layer... Here is a snippet showing how to create a block to output a list of nodes...
<?php
function get_relevant_nodes($terms) {
if (empty($terms)) {
return t('There are no terms provided...');
}
else {
views_load_cache();
views_load_query();
$view = views_create_view('view_id_goes_here', 'View Description Goes Here');
views_view_add_block($view, 'Title Of Block', 'list', 3, 0, 0);
views_view_add_field($view, 'n', 'title', '', false, 0, 'views_handler_field_nodelink');
$args = implode(',', array_keys($terms));
$result = db_query('SELECT
n.nid,
n.title AS n_title,
COUNT(*) AS cnt
FROM {node} n
LEFT JOIN {term_node} tn ON tn.nid = n.nid AND tn.tid IN (%s)
WHERE n.type = "blog" AND tn.tid IS NOT NULL
GROUP BY n.nid
ORDER BY cnt DESC, n.created DESC
LIMIT 3', $args);
$items = array();
while ($item = db_fetch_object($result)) {
$items[] = $item;
}
$view->build_type = 'block';
$view->type = 'list';
$view->num_rows = 3;
views_sanitize_view($view);
return views_theme('views_view', $view, 'block', $items, NULL, array());
}
}
?>This function expects an array of terms where they keys are the term ID's. If the array is empty, return a status message. If not, load the cache and query part of views (this invokes some include files). Next you create a basic view object. The next two commands define a block and a field for the list. Next I create comma separated terms and pass them into my SQL. This SQL creates a list of nodes of the type 'blog' which are tagged with at least 1 or the terms provided and then orders them by how many matching terms there were (and then on node created). This provides a list of nodes "most relevant" to the set of terms provided.
Next each node (ID, title and count) is put into an array. and 3 final view variables are set. I dont know if num_rows is needed...
The sanitizing goes over the view and "finishes it off" by doing things like figuring out the field name, etc. Finally, return the themed output!