Node Hierarchy

Node Hierarchy is a module which allows nodes to be children of other nodes creating a tree-like hierarchy of content.

The module offers:

• Automatic hierarchical urls using pathauto
  (eg: http://example.com/aboutus/history/beginning).
• Automatic creation of hierarchical menus if desired.
• Optional Views integration.
• Optional Node Access integration (REMOVED UNTILL NODE ACCESS IS UPDATED)

Installation

Go to Administer>>Content Management>>Modules and enable the Node Hierarchy module.

Configuration

You must then tell the module which node types can be parents and which can be children. To do this you can either:

• Go to Administer>>Content Management>>Content Types.
  Click "edit" on the types you want modify and check the "Can be parent" and "Can be child" checkboxes.
  -- OR --
• Go to Administer>>Site Configuration>>Node Hierarchy and check the boxes for the desired types.

You can also pick a default node for each given type. For example, you can create a page called "Blogs" and have nodes of type "blog" be a child of that page by default.

Permissions

You will need to assign the following permissions to the appropriate users:

• create child nodes: For users who are allowed to create children under existing nodes.
• edit all node parents: For users who are allowed to change the parent of any node, regardless of authorship.
• edit own node parents: For users who are allowed to change the parent of nodes which they have authored.
• reorder children: For users who are allowed to change the order of children on any node.
• view site outline: For users who are allowed to view the site outline
• administer hierarchy: For users who are allowed to edit the node hierarchy defaults.

Using Node Hierarchy

Creating Hierarchical Content

To assign a parent to a node, either:

• Create a new node of a type that whose "Can be child" setting is true or edit an existing node. Expand the Node Hierarchy fieldset and chose a parent from the pulldown.
  -- OR --
• Navigate to the node you wish to make a parent. Click on the children tab, and click on one of the create links at the bottom of the tab.

Creating A Menu

To create a menu for a node, edit the node, expand the Node Hierarchy fieldset and check the "Create Menu" box. Click Submit.

If the node's parent has a menu item, a new menu will be created for the node under its parent's menu item. The name of the menu item will be the title of the node and its weight will be the node's sort order.

If you edit the parent of a node or its title, you can recreate an existing menu item by checking "Recreate Menu". This will set the menu item's parent to the new parent and the title to the new title. This is not done automatically on edit, so that you can maintain menu hierarchy separately from node hierarchy if desired.

If the node does not have a parent or its parent does not have a menu item, the new menu item will be a child of the default menu item set in the Node Hierarchy settings.

Reordering Content

Use the green arrow links on the Children tab of the parent node to rearrange child nodes. This will also update the order of any generated menu items as long as they have not been moved from their original location.

Integration with Other Modules

Pathauto 1.x

Node Hierarchy integrates with Pathauto to create hierarchical urls. There are two tokens provided to Pathauto 1.x by Node Hierarchy:
[hierarchypath]: This is the path of the node's parent.
[fullhierarchypath]: This is the path to the node including the node's own name. You can use this token on its own to create hierarchical urls for your nodes. This token is the same as [title] for nodes which do not have a parent.

Token and Pathauto 2.x

Node Hierarchy integrates with token (and therefore Pathauto 2.x and others). For a description of available tokens see the Pathauto setting screen (or any other token list).

For Pathauto, the recommended token to use is [fullhierarchypath] as it will reflect any changes you have made to the url of a nodes ancestors. For example, if you have a node called "our history" but you forgot automatically generated urls and create the path alias 'history' for that node, its children will have the automatically generated paths 'history/xxx' instead of 'our-history/xxx'.

Views

To enable views integration, turn on the Node Hierarchy Views module. With this module turned on, you will also be able to embed a view of a node's children on that node's page. Node hierarchy integrates with Views to provide the following:
Arguments
Parent Node Id - Takes a node id and returns only nodes which are children of that node. Used to provide lists of children for a given node.
Fields
Sort Order - The numerical sort order of a child node.
Actions - A set of actions to manipulate child nodes. Should only be used in views accessible by Administrators.
Sort Fields
Sort Order - Use this to sort child nodes by their Node Hierarchy sort order.

Node Access

Node Access integration has been removed from Version 6, as the nodeaccess module has not been updated to 6 at the time of this writing.

Known Issues

• Not tested for large number (2,000+) of child nodes on a single parent.
• Conflicts with Book (see this issue for more information: http://drupal.org/node/190456).
• Settings can break with long content type names.
• Does not respect revisions - hierarchy settings are revision independent.
• Not tested with pgsql install

To Do

• Improve "Can be child" setting to allow admins to specify which node types can be children of which node types. (e.g. 'chapter' nodes can only be children of 'book' nodes)
• Drag and drop reordering and parent changing.
• OPML import and export