By cycas on

I have developed a Drupal site, and need to add a fairly simple address book / contact manager.

I'd planned to use CiviCRM, though it has more power than I need really. Unfortunately, I've just realised that the server I am using has Zend Optimizer release 2.5.7, and according to the documentation, CiviCRM will not run with that. Arg. The rest of the site is all built, I thought this bit would be easy!

Can anyone suggest examples of ways you have done this, or modules that might do the job?

I need some way of adding names and sorting them by group, ideally I'd like to be able to search by group or name.

⋅ Categories: Drupal 4.7.x

Comments

jeff h’s picture

jeff h commented

Hi... I'm not aware of any modules that do what you're after "out-of-the-box", but you could likely achieve it with a combination of the CCK and Views modules. This might be a bit of a learning curve if you've not played with them, but the flexibility is enormous and will probably allow you to do exactly what you're looking for.

I say probably because I'm not exactly sure what you're hoping for. Do you want the address book to only contain info about members of your site? Or is it a freeform container for anyone you want to add, site member or not? If the latter, the CCK and views combo will almost certainly do the trick. If the former, it still might :)

You'd need to:

* add a taxonomy vocab containing the list of groups.

* use CCK to create a new content type called "address book entry" or "contact" or whatever. Give this CCK type whatever fields you want in your address book.

* assign the taxonomy vocab to your new CCK type

* create a new view which allows you to search and sort nodes of type "contact" (or whatever your CCK type was called

Jeff

_________
http://marmaladesoul.com

akolahi’s picture

akolahi commented

I never realized how powerful cck and views were. I just followed exacly what you said and was able to create a contact "content type" and an address book organized exactly how i want it - and it works perfectly :)

I installed CiviCRM to do this functionality and it was TOTAL OVERKILL... and didnt even do exaclty what i wanted. This did the trick.

Thanks!

jeff h’s picture

jeff h commented

Glad you got it working!

_________
http://marmaladesoul.com

yanger’s picture

yanger commented

Hi. Kinda newbie at this.. so bear with me...

So, I assumed the CCK and Views modules needed to be installed, so it's installed now :)

Then you went: "You'd need to:

* add a taxonomy vocab containing the list of groups.
*** unsure what you mean... the only thing similar to it is: /admin/content/types

* use CCK to create a new content type called "address book entry" or "contact" or whatever. Give this CCK type whatever fields you want in your address book.
*** this also I did not understand.... please explain?

* assign the taxonomy vocab to your new CCK type
***it looks like you can assign them via /admin/content/types but didn't know because can't get the above working...

* create a new view which allows you to search and sort nodes of type "contact" (or whatever your CCK type was called
*** ditto."

I'm using 5.x.x so ... please advise...

---------------------------
yanger

yoroy’s picture

yoroy commented

* add a taxonomy vocab containing the list of groups.
go to administer > content > categories.
Creata a new vocab, with the groups being terms in this vocabulary

* use CCK to create a new content type called "address book entry" or "contact" or whatever. Give this CCK type whatever fields you want in your address book.
CCK let's you define your own content type. Where the contenttype "story" has only "title" and "body' fields, your own contentype "contact" could have fiels for name, adress, phone etc.

* assign the taxonomy vocab to your new CCK type
In the settings for the vocab you created in step 1, you assign your "contact" contenttype as a nodetype that can have terms from this vocab.

* create a new view which allows you to search and sort nodes of type "contact" (or whatever your CCK type was called
Views is a big beast. Basically it helps you ask the question you need to ask the database to get the list of stuff you want. In this case, you'd create a View that returns the answer to something like "show me al nodes of type "contact", make the result sortable by catagory term, etc.

hope this helps, good luck!

tasigurl’s picture

tasigurl commented

yoroy can you (or any body) elaborate more on :
* add a taxonomy vocab containing the list of groups.
go to administer > content > categories.
Creata a new vocab, with the groups being terms in this vocabulary

How would users add, edit and delete their info?

any help would be greatly appreciated.

I asked the same questions about using PHP code to create an address book in drupal: http://drupal.org/node/297855

and it was asked again here: http://drupal.org/node/298321

cmgui’s picture

cmgui commented

Hi yoroy

do we really need taxonomy for the groups?
also, how to use the tags to sort/search by groups?

how about creating a field in the content type called "Group"?
and every record in the addressbook has a group field -- so no need for taxonomy?

-- ok, i used taxonomy to create a vocabulary called "groups" and added items "clients", "employees", "suppliers", etc.
then in my View, I added a filter to filter taxonomy term is one of "clients", "employees", etc.
I did this because I have a Edit node in my view and it will display all the nodes in my website
unless I do a filter. And the only way I could filter my AddressBook content type is to make use of
taxonomy and filter by terms. Is this the correct way?

Also, how can I include the /node/add/address-book link in the View page so that
users can click on it to add a record - instead of having to do it in Create Content.

Also, how to create a search box in the View page so that users can enter a name or tel no., etc to search the entire address book?

thank you.

gui

turkeybat’s picture

turkeybat commented

Hi,

I just tried making this. I have it partially complete but I do not understand what, * add a taxonomy vocab containing the list of groups. means

After I figure that out how do I do this?
* assign the taxonomy vocab to your new CCK type

I've done this part: * use CCK to create a new content type called "address book entry" or "contact" or whatever. Give this CCK type whatever fields you want in your address book

I just want a general address book that any logged in user can use to fill out their information.

I've only been using Drupal for three days so any help anyone could provide would be greatly appreciated!

Kristen

trantt’s picture

trantt commented

nice post.

thanks

cycas’s picture

cycas commented

I just realised I didn't update on this. In the end what I did was get the hosting company to change the version of Zend Optimiser so I could use CiviCRM.

However, having played with CCK and Views a bit more now, I'd definitely do it that way in future, that suggestion was spot on, for anyone who is looking to do the same thing.

CiviCRM is a great waddling monster of a module and really too complex for the simple task I needed it for.

Danzki’s picture

Danzki commented

Does this also allow for users to edit in contact list, or even edit more than a single contact at a time?

Im looking to create a address book of non-users, where certain parts of it has restricted viewing and/or editing. Im certain views can handle the last part, but just curious whether you can also make an easy editing function.