Views: How a (somewhat post-) newb thinks through the taxonomy view problem...

The background: Some months ago I began working with views to try to manage site information by taxonomy term. After working for a while on the problem, I turned to this forum for help (and committed myself to writing a tutorial when the problem was solved). I didn't figure out a solution through that thread, but have discovered others face similar issues. (http://drupal.org/node/139616)

I moved to other problems for a while, then returned and found this thread (http://drupal.org/node/128085) where several solutions (using views, php, and other approaches) are offered. It seems to have solved the issue for some users, but although I have imported and tried to modify the views posted in this thread to see if they would work for me, I've had little success.

Although I have learned lots about views by reading forum posts and looking at the views documentation (and particularly http://drupal.org/node/54432), and although I have managed to create some simpler views, I still have not been able to sort out what I think is probably a very straightforward views task, and one which I observe many users trying in frustration to get views to achieve.

Now I am going to try to think through the problem in the hope that someone with better understanding of the system has an Aha! moment and can tell me what I'm doing wrong. And perhaps by detailing my newbie approach, I can help the views experts make Views more accessible to less experienced users.

Note: I really want a Views solution here, partly because Views seems like it should be within my grasp, and partly because the various PHP and module solutions I have found are both very far from what I want and completely opaque (to me in any case) in terms of manipulating their output.

Here goes:

The problem: I have a CCK content type called "Resources". It's basically just an edit of the Story content type with link fields added. I created a vocabulary called "Resource Categories" whose terms refer to, well, specific categories of resources I want to publish on my site. That vocabulary is applied to the Resources content type and I have been happily creating new Resource nodes now for some months.

Of course, it isn't particularly useful to browse through so many nodes stored in reverse chronological order. So I would like to use Views to generate an alphabetical listing of terms used in Resource Categories, with each term followed by a nested list of titles to which that term is applied. The node titles should link to each individual Resource entry. Something like this:

• Cars (3)
• Buick
• Niva
• Volkswagen
• Trucks (1)
• Mack
• etc.

This seems like it should be a straightforward Views task, but the closest I have come to approximating this list is something more like:

• Cars (1)
• Cars (1)
• Cars (1)
• Trucks (1)

Or even worse...

• Resource Categories (1)
• Resource Categories (1)
• Resource Categories (1)
• Resource Categories (1)

The way I see it, this must be a problem with the way I am creating the views, because if Views could not create a simple list like this, then it wouldn't be getting all the rave reviews.

Thinking through the process: Having dug into the sources mentioned above (among others) here is how I am approaching creating the view.

1. I create a view called "resource_categories" with access for all users and the description, "Browse Resource Categories"
2. I make it a Page view at URL resources/categories of view type List View. I use the pager and give it 30 nodes per page
3. For now I ignore header, footer, and empty text
5. I provide a menu as a tab, weight -10 (I want this to be a tabbed view, though I have not yet created another tab)
6. For now, I ignore the block region; I will want a block later, but for now am focused on the page view
7. Fields. Ok, here's where I think the critical stuff begins. As I understand it, Fields are essentially the information you want to have shown in the view. In my case, these are: Taxonomy: Terms for Resource Categories set with option "without links" (and label is blank) and Node: Title with label blank, handler normal, option "as link", sortable "no" (I don't want users to be able to sort this, though "yes" did not seem to make any difference) and default sort "ascending" (alphabetical)

• My logic here: If I list the taxonomy terms first and node titles second in the Fields category, this is the closest approximation of the end result I want available to me in Fields.

As far as I can tell, this view should give me the result I want. Instead I get a listing of my node titles (as links) and above each node title is an alphabetized, horizontal listing of all the Resource Category terms associated with the node. Hmmmm.... This (like other results) is close enough to give me hope, but not close enough to make me happy. I can study the list and see that the nodes appear in an order following the alphabetical order of the category terms, but that won't help my users.

Here is the link to my current view (http://kjourn.net/resources/categories). It may change from what is described above as I play around with it. I will also post an export of my view current below.

Now my questions (if you've stayed with me thus far, and I am grateful if you have): What am I doing wrong? How am I misusing views and ending up with something other than what I want? What suggestions do you have for fixing this?

I renew my promise here: Once I have a solution for this, I will write it up as a tutorial. And now that I think of it, what you've read just now might serve as a new Drupal.org genre: the puzz-torial. I'm still looking for a solution. Thanks for listening. My exported view follows below:

******

$view = new stdClass();
$view->name = 'resource_categories';
$view->description = 'Browse Resource Categories';
$view->access = array (
);
$view->view_args_php = '';
$view->page = TRUE;
$view->page_title = 'Browse Resource Categories';
$view->page_header = 'You are browsing a listing of Kjourn.net\'s resource categories.

';
$view->page_header_format = '3';
$view->page_footer = '';
$view->page_footer_format = '1';
$view->page_empty = '';
$view->page_empty_format = '1';
$view->page_type = 'list';
$view->url = 'resources/categories';
$view->use_pager = TRUE;
$view->nodes_per_page = '30';
$view->menu = TRUE;
$view->menu_title = 'Subject Headings';
$view->menu_tab = TRUE;
$view->menu_tab_weight = '-10';
$view->menu_tab_default = TRUE;
$view->menu_tab_default_parent = NULL;
$view->menu_tab_default_parent_type = 'tab';
$view->menu_parent_tab_weight = '0';
$view->menu_parent_title = '';
$view->sort = array (
array (
'tablename' => 'term_data',
'field' => 'weight',
'sortorder' => 'ASC',
'options' => '',
),
array (
'tablename' => 'node',
'field' => 'title',
'sortorder' => 'ASC',
'options' => '',
),
);
$view->argument = array (
array (
'type' => 'taxletter',
'argdefault' => '2',
'title' => '',
'options' => '',
'wildcard' => '',
'wildcard_substitution' => '',
),
);
$view->field = array (
array (
'tablename' => 'term_node_5',
'field' => 'name',
'label' => '',
'options' => 'nolink',
),
array (
'tablename' => 'node',
'field' => 'title',
'label' => '',
'handler' => 'views_handler_field_nodelink',
'defaultsort' => 'ASC',
'options' => 'link',
),
);
$view->filter = array (
array (
'tablename' => 'node',
'field' => 'status',
'operator' => '=',
'options' => '',
'value' => '1',
),
array (
'tablename' => 'term_data',
'field' => 'vid',
'operator' => 'OR',
'options' => '',
'value' => array (
0 => '5',
),
),
);
$view->exposed_filter = array (
);
$view->requires = array(term_data, node, term_node_5);
$views[$view->name] = $view;