By jacobmn on

Sorry to bother people with what should be a very simple thing... At least I think so. I am pretty familiar with Drupal at this point and have done a few sites, but still don't know what Node Reference is actually used for. I have an idea it's pretty powerful and can be very useful, but in all my searching I can't seem to find a good answer to the question:

What is node reference really useful for, and can someone give a real-life example. I know of sites using it, but still don't know the specifics. Any insight would be appreciated.

Thanks!

⋅ Categories: Drupal 6.x

Comments

cog.rusty’s picture

cog.rusty commented

Imagine a music site which has nodes for CDs and nodes for artists. Each CD could contain a nodereference field pointing to its artist(s).

Or a commercial site which has nodes for products and nodes for manufacturers. Each product could contain a nodereference field pointing to its manufacturer.

WorldFallz’s picture

WorldFallz commented

A practical benefit of this relationship, is that you can then easily create views that reference data from either or both content types (ie CDs grouped by artist).

m_i_c_h_a_e_l’s picture

m_i_c_h_a_e_l commented

I'm having the same problem -- getting my head wrapped around both node and user reference.

From the description above, it sounds like they are really just a place to put a link to another node (or to a user).

But when we get into creating views that reference data from other nodes, I'm a little lost.

I'm a visual guy. Is anyone aware of any tutorials or demo sites that show references in action?

I'm studying hard, but sometimes it helps to watch a little video. :-)

Thanks

WorldFallz’s picture

WorldFallz commented

There's a pretty good video on views relationships (which implement nodereferences in an extremely useful way) on http://drupal.org/node/248766 as well as some other excellent views tutorials.