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By mroswell on
I'm looking at a fresh new copy of Drupal 5 Views Recipes. I wrote it, and I'm thrilled to see it in print.
I have a mix of Drupal 5 and Drupal 6 sites out there. If you've got any Drupal 5 sites, consider this book.
Appendices
I'll start by mentioning the appendices, since I think that's one of the most information-rich sections of the book. (The rest of the book consists of 94 step-by-step recipes.)
Appendix A – List of all default views available for Drupal 5
Appendix B – Comprehensive list of Drupal 5 field formatters, by module
Appendix C – Comprehensive list of Drupal 5 style plugins, by module
Appendix D – Views 1 hooks
Appendix E – Modules included in recipe ingredients
Appendix F – Additional resources and modules
Appendix G – Selected noteworthy patches to Views, sorted by topic
Appendix E can serve as an index to the recipes, and also includes a column indicating which modules are available for Drupal 6. Appendix G unlocks a whole host of functionality not available in Views 1 by default.
Recipes
Interesting content includes:
- How to overcome the case of the missing term in taxonomy views
- Views arguments
- Proximity search (Find every trailhead within 6 miles of a Senior Center, for instance)
- Views Bulk Operations (such as mass updates of taxonomy)
- Views Fusion, and the Views Fusion Node Reference patch
- Using !$ and Ctrl-U in command line editing
- Detailed steps for upgrading the Date and Calendar modules from 5.x-1.x to 5.x-2.x
- Three options for setting up cron
- Grouped views with the Views theme wizard
- Overriding themes_view_view
- Table of debugging techniques, including the author's favorites
- Browser plugin for searching the Contributions API page
- A quick way to format SQL queries for easier reading
- All the basic stuff, such as cloning views, using default views, sorting, filtering, etc.
- Exposed Filters
- Recipes for creating timelines, event listings, photo galleries, podcasting, panels, CCK Extras, etc.
15% off
Drupal.org readers (you!) can get a 15% discount.
Use the code: Dru15Views
The code appears at the bottom of the shopping cart page.
Note: Packt contributes a portion of each sale to the Drupal Association.
I'm hoping you'll find this book as useful as I do. (I've actually started following my own recipes; they get the job done.)
Here's some sample content from the book (from Chapters 3 and 8) :
http://www.packtpub.com/article/date-calendar-module-in-drupal-5-part2
http://www.packtpub.com/article/navigating-the-online-drupal-community
The book is available here:
https://www.packtpub.com/drupal-5-views-recipes/book
Enjoy,
Marjorie Roswell
Comments
Good one. Sad it's out today
Good one. Sad it's out today and not a year earlier.
views for drupal 5 ????
views for drupal 5 ????
Drupal 5 sites still exist
Granted, I started it last year, months before Views 2 was out. (Books do take a while to write.)
Even so, lots of folks still have Drupal 5 sites out there.
I put up a little Drupal 6 site yesterday, and found the following pages (from my own book) helpful:
pg. 139 - variable overrides in settings.php (quick way to customize date format)
pgs. 136 - 137 - the date and time formats
pg. 219 - How to change ownership of the files directory to the apache user (instead of setting permissions to 777)
On another Drupal 6 site, I found pg. 148 to be a helpful reminder on how to create summary views.
Lots of stuff already "in my head," but I've used my own book as a reference for both D5 and D6 sites. I guess if nobody buys it because it's a Drupal 5 book (sniffly sob), at least It'll be useful to one soul.
I'm hoping folks who have Drupal 5 sites will take to it. It's a pretty good book.
(I figure Drupal 6-ers will also find the appendices to be useful.)
Here's hoping,
Margie
Sorry, but seeing the '5'
Sorry, but seeing the '5' really was the reason for me to not buy this book, while I have bought quite some Drupal books lately...
of course there are many drupal 5 sites
of course there are many drupal 5 sites
BUT: IS ANYONE BUILING NEW DRUPAL 5 SITES?i dont think so(maybe im wrong)
D5 is EOL
I think you are correct: Most new sites will be developed in D6. While there are still many legacy D5 sites out there, i suspect most are expecting to migrate to D6 “soon.” This mindset will likely preclude most of them from investing in a book about “obsolete” technology. Even so, this book may find a niche market.
On the other hand, if this book were about D6, i would be most interested in it. Especially if said book also included Webform.
The truth is when Drupal 6
The truth is when Drupal 6 came out, a lot of critical modules such as Views, CKK were still lagging behind. If my memory serves me right, it wasn't until version 6.7 that Views, CCK have completely ported to Drupal 6.
Clarification
Views and cck were completely rewritten for d6 -- they were not simply ported.. This is a common misconception.
I hope you come up with
I hope you come up with something in D7 next (skip the D6).
-Victor
http://elagaan.com - kinda Turbo tax online for india
Yes that's good advice, and
Yes that's good advice, and since you already made the wonderful effort of writing a book, you'll have big chunks of text that you can reuse, you can still keep the same structure, so a lot of work will be done, but you can start writing for D7 by following the D7 advancement of the core and main modules, and you can be ready soon after D7 launch, which will probably be another 6 months from now at least.
So you have time.
But it's true that I've been very surprise to see a new book about D5, I thought it was a bug on drupal homepage and that it was an old news. Sorry about that.
Great book for D5
I just got this book, as I have lots of D5 sites still out there (and I reviewed it). This is a great book and I have learned how to do some very cool things with it. If you're not doing any D5 sites, obviously its not for you, although the extra modules mentioned in the book could still work in D6, but if you still have D5 sites, its well worth a look. Hopefully we'll see a D6 version at some point.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________
well i dont think they way
well i dont think they way you set up views in drupal 6 has changed a lot since version5, sure the UI has changed with the implementation of ajax, but the underlining is still the same i think.
I have been looking for a drupal book dedicated on views since the begining of the year when building my first drupal site, because views is and still overwhelming even for advance users
I will definetely be checking this book out
Thanks for it
There are a lot of D5 sites
There are a lot of D5 sites out there that need modification, and upgrading to D6 is not an option (budget, time constraints), so I can see a use for this book.
Of course, it would probably enjoy a larger audience if it were written for D6, but perhaps a niche market is what this writer wanted to address.
Good luck, and thank you for your contribution to the advancement and usage of Drupal!
-Corey
Dear Packt and Marjorie,
Congratulations on this book, it is a welcome addition to the lineup. Please turn around and update it for Views 2 and Drupal 6, as Ric Shreeves did with the Drupal Themes book. Great work!
Thank You!
Thank you Marjorie Roswell !!
Dear mroswell,Congrats!
Dear mroswell,
Congrats for the book.
There are hundreds of unsolved
problems with Views for Drupal 5
http://drupal.org/project/issues/views?text=&status=Open&priorities=All&...
Do you present with these solutions
or can one solve this by reading this book?
What are the additional information
that is available in the book than provided
in the documention and help files on Views
on the net?
Author response
Thanks all, for the warm words, above. :)
re: Hundreds of unsolved problems with views:
If you seek answers to the never-solved-before problems in Views, you'll be disappointed. (Of course, the book has good guidance on how to interact with the issue queue--where this stuff can be ironed out.)
Documentation and appropriate patches:
While the book doesn't solve the yet-unsolved, it does offer pointers to many existing solutions and patches that most people don't realize are out there. (These pointers are mostly handled through recipe notes, and appendices.)
Additional Information:
The book is sprinkled with a number of original solutions as well: a jQuery command to expand the whole views interface (rather than having to click on almost two-dozen fieldsets). Vim and putty.exe commands (narrow use cases?) for solving some pesky character set issues that may arise when theming views. A quick way to search the Contributions API from your browser. Displaying mini-pie charts with sIFR. Proximity Search, together with the Views Custom Field module. etc.
One little recipe is devoted to providing more detail to one line of documentation; I figured many readers would want to adjust the view but not know how to follow the SimpleFeed documentation guidance to "simply use Drupal's hook_link_alter" to remove links that appear with each feed node.
Anyhow, a lot of this book is nuts and bolts stuff. Summary views, Exposed Filters options, Views Bulk Operations, cron setup, use cases for the Flag module with Views, argument handling code snippets to relate content linked by node reference, etc. I don't want to scare potential readers into thinking the book will be too exotic.
Drupal5.x? It's out?
Drupal5.x?
It's out?
LOL
Ha ha! Yeah, guess you missed the memo! ;-)
Know what you mean though: Just upgraded a 4.7 site a couple months ago. We had been intending to upgrade to D5 ever since it came out, but for one reason or another never got around to it (a round tuit?). By the time we were ready to upgrade, D6 had been out for quite a while. We had planned to take the site to D6 almost immediately, but it lingered at D5 a month or two due to technical issues (and lack of time to address them immediately). I certainly can understand why folks are not in a hurry to face the upgrade hassle.
At least we don’t have major version upgrades every 6 months anymore, like in the 4.x.y days.
Drupal 5? Books must teach me
Drupal 5?
Books must teach me some new things to try. Drupal 7 on air bro. Do you write this book in 1,5 years or what's your point? Drupal 5 is more stable ? I'm confused sorry
Too late in the game
Drupal 5? Too late in the game. Anyway - Drupal is not my favorite anyway! Used to work on it. But a local company here "big Drupal shop" showed some Drupal sites moved to Ruby on Rails. Now learning Rails!
...
Eh ok, relevant to this post how? Have fun scaling ;)
... ...
Let me tell you, I've had a blast scaling Drupal... If it wasn't for PHP's inherent speed and some memcache love, a high volume Drupal site would run just about as fast as the release of this book did. As for your knock on Rails, please find me a Drupal site that's had to scale as much as Twitter has.
Invalid comparison!
Drupal is a CMS and CMF; it's not a programming language. You can't just compare it to Ruby & Rails. Also, Twitter has had a long history of scaling issues. That is not to say R&R is bad.
No kidding!
I'm not the one who made the comparison. I was someone who responded to someone who was responding to someone who made the comparison. I'm fully with you about there being no comparison between a CMS and an MVC framework. And as far as CMS's go Drupal is tops...just beware if you hire a CMS to do a MVC's job.
As for scaling. Yes, Rails has some scaling problems. Heck, does anything not have scaling problems? Scaling is inherently a problem...but a damn good one to have!
How did I miss this?
I got so caught up in agreeing with you that Rails and Drupal shouldn't be compared that I neglected to realize you have no idea what you're talking about!
"Drupal is a CMS and CMF; it's not a programming language. You can't just compare it to Ruby & Rails."
It's not Ruby & Rails, it's Ruby on Rails, and it's not a programming language. Ruby is the language, Rails is the framework. "Invalid comparisons" aside, PHP is to Ruby as Drupal is to Rails.
Author response
Responding to "would run just about as fast as the release of this book did"
Hi all, This book went from initial proposal to contract to published book in less than a year. It's hard to get a book, complete with technical review, out much faster than that.
Trust me on two things:
1. I tried to write a Views 2 book, but when I began, Views 2 was still in beta, Views-enabled modules for the most part weren't there yet, and some that were there were hosing my test sites. Not a pretty or productive picture. I didn't think I could effectively write a Views 2 recipe book at the time, unable to predict the future, not knowing how rapidly things would shift. I figured I'd be spending all my time in the issue queue, rather than meeting deadlines.
An example: By the time the 6.x development release of the Views Custom Field module appeared--which a number of my recipes use--the draft manuscript of my D5 book was nearly 3/4 complete.
2. It takes fortitude to complete a D5 book, knowing the likely reception, but I started it, and finished it (yay!) and it's a useful resource.
I appreciate all the warm words and congrats! Thank-you, kind Drupalers! Writing can be lonely, and I couldn't have done it without all the folks I thanked in the acknowledgments.
I'm interested in public comments from folks who've got the book (still my heart...) and in private comments from other authors. How did you--or did you not--stay healthy and fit during the process?
I do plan a Views 2 book, if Packt wants one. It won't be quick, it's a real project. (It might be just in time for people to laugh about writing a Drupal 6 book... Ah, indeed, the Drop is always moving.)
Hmmm... maybe my next book will be called "How to Stay Healthy and Fit as a Drupal Developer!"
I'm making comments from the beautiful mountains of Panama, where I'm taking a month-long get-healthy/lose-book-weight retreat. Internet access is sparse and expensive. I can monitor remarks and reply infrequently.
All the best, and warm thoughts from a warm place,
Margie
Commenter response
Margie, I apologize that a shot at your book got caught up in my response. I respect you for having your work published, something that I will never experience, nor probably even attempt.
Personally, I really have no interest in this book, or any Drupal book for that matter. I only use Drupal because the site I work on does and I generally avoid modules anyway because for the most part they are poorly written, inefficient ::cough::VIEWS::cough::, and mostly useless unless you have no programming experience and use Drupal strictly as a CMS. I was just passed this thread by a co-worker of mine and I saw a number of posts about the release being untimely, so I went with it.
Good luck to you and your book...I hope you are able to publish many more.
Wow
So you're not interested in this book, Drupal, or its modules. You just came here to be insulting, then? Please tell your co-worker to not pass any more threads to you. This sort of rude comment is not needed here. People who give hundreds of hours of free time to this project don't need to be pissed on by you.
Michelle
Chill out
Michelle, methinks you’re attacking the wrong person. I don’t see anything nrgamble wrote that was insulting. Granted, the comment about how long it took to release this book was a bit on the snide side, but there was also enough truth to it to be funny; i took it in the spirit of a light-hearted jest rather than an attack on the author.
It was sudhirpatel’s comments which were somewhat vulgar and impolite, and not particularly useful to the discussion. Even so, it was largely an expression of an opinion, and not a personal attack. And here we are – all of us – feeding the troll.
I got the right person
As a module maintainer myself and friend of the views maintainer, I found this very offensive:
When I see my friend's work being pissed on, yes, I'm going to speak up, feeding the troll or not.
Michelle
Michelle...
You really like to use the term "pissed on". Do you teach your kids to talk that way?
There is a difference between "pissing" on something and stating facts. Views is inefficient. Have you ever actually looked at the queries it generates? Or the memory it consumes?
I'm sorry your friends with the developer of it, but don't use that as reason to ignore the truth. Instead of getting angry, how about you accept that at least one company that started out using Views has stopped, as traffic grew, because of it's performance problems and use that information go back and refine the module to better serve the Drupal community that you are so proud to be a part of?
Views being "poorly written"
Views being "poorly written" is not a fact, it is an opinion. You're entitled to your opinion, but the bait & switch routine does not make your opinions facts, and clearly facts don't necessarily match your opinions. But I daresay if you wish to call Views poorly written offhandedly, you're just going to make enemies. Presumably you don't care about doing that.
-- Merlin
[Read my writing: ehalseymiles.com]
[Read my Coding blog: Angry Donuts]
_
Since we're busy teaching people how to behave... there's also a difference between 'stating facts' and ::cough::pissing::cough:: on other people's work-- particularly when one has contributed nothing to the community.
And please don't be insulting and disingenuous by claiming your criticism was in any way simply 'stating facts'. That would have been done without the 'coughing'.
Query builders are, in general, inefficient. Views is not 'poorly written'-- the task it's aimed at is a difficult one and inefficient (as compared to hand tweaked queries) by it's very nature. That's not a fault of the module or the author in any way. Views is an incredible contribution for the task it's aimed at.
Pay close attention
I never said Views was poorly written, I said it was inefficient. That is why the ::cough:: followed the inefficient claim, not the poorly written claim. Go grab the devel module, hack it to display memory usage in line with query execution time and run it on your Views based pages. It's inefficient. It's a fact. Deal with it.
Commented on book timing
I just said that book timing was wrong. As others said, book about Drupal 6 Views would be ideal at this stage. After working about 18 months in Drupal and following few local shops I just recently switched to Rails.
With CCK/Views and CMF while it improves development, it adds another abstraction layer and eats up lot of resources. Maybe if someone can tell me otherwise and show some performance gains in using CCK/View over custom module, it would help me clear my doubts that I carry for quite some time.
I also came to know few sites that went from Drupal to Rails and this lured me into moving to Rails.Being in early stage of career, I am looking for something that will help me grow in next 10 years. I know its not going to be .NET or Java. I see more jobs in Rails http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=drupal%2C+ruby+on+rails%2C+joomla&l= and also love coding in Object Oriented Programming.
Drupal is not my favorite now and this is MY personal opinion - no way bashing Drupal. I know there are many(I used to be one of them) who love Drupal and I still do some subcontracted freelance work. But that's all about it.
correction, nevermind.
correction, nevermind.
No worries.
No worries. I understand this genre of book is not a match for everyone. We all find our right spot in the online universe.
Healthy and Fit
Hi Margie,
I know this is an old post but I couldn't resist
Hmmm... maybe my next book will be called "How to Stay Healthy and Fit as a Drupal Developer!"
Well that's already been solved
http://www.breakpal.com
and it's built on drupal of course
Contact me if you want me to set you up with a membership. It's a must for drupal developers.
Phil
Congratulations, Marjorie.
Congratulations, Marjorie.
drupal 6 is ftw
drupal 6 is ftw
what does that mean?
what does that mean?
for the win
He (probably) means "for the win" (ftw is usually short for that). It means he prefers D6.
Congratulations
Congrats on getting your booked publish :)
Congratulations on your new
Congratulations on your new book, I'll be checking it out!
Drupal 6 is mostly based on Drupal 5 in many aspects
Hi, first congratulation for your Book.
I'm not a coder and not a developer. I use Drupal for many years yet and even if my own online(live) test site was shortly upgraded to 6, I have many test site on my local network for testing purposes that are version 5.
I really want to underline here that if you want to become more confident with any further Drupal version, you must know the basics of Drupal 5 especially in regards of "Views" module.
The progress of the help module and advanced-help module is not yet targetting the goal that the name of the modules itself declare. So I can just say and suggest to all guys that want to become prrof in managing Drupal sites of what ever version, do appreciate that there are still people wrking to buld such type of documentations.
Kind Regards
Can't agree
I really want to underline here that if you want to become more confident with any further Drupal version, you must know the basics of Drupal 5 especially in regards of "Views" module.
D6 and Views 2 have so many important differences, I think a new site developer should steer well clear of the old versions and come straight to the current technology. No point learning old practices just to unlearn them again.
I agree
This book is fine for folks who inherit an old site and need to add a view but I can't recommend it for folks using D6. The interface changed so dramatically between D5 and D6 that trying to use this with D6 views is going to confuse you. For folks that haven't seen both, they are seriously night and day.
Michelle
Note from Margie
The book is not being marketed as a Drupal 6 book. Even so, I think Drupal 6 users will find Appendices B, E, and F to be quite helpful. Some recipes will be directly applicable as well, while others will provide inspiration to those familiar with both interfaces. (I'm also of the ilk that it's a lot easier to learn Views 2 with Views 1 experience, but I can see opinions differ on that.)
Unfortunate timing
That may be so, but i’m not going to spend any money on this book to use with V2. That’s not intended as an affront; merely a statement of fact. I fully understand how difficult it is to catch the swiftly moving target which is Drupal (it’s like trying to nail jelly to a tree). Hopefully you can leverage on what you have already written which is appropriate to V2, and write a D6/V2 version of this book. If you can get that out before D7, or if Views remains essentially unchanged in D7, then i’d be interested in your book. Especially if you added a few chapters about Webform.
But i respectfully disagree that Views 1 experience is all that helpful. Granted, one can leverage off that experience, but the help is minimal, IMO. I really agree with Michelle’s comments; she hit the nail squarely on the head, IMO.
At any rate, best of luck with this book… and the next. :-)
Drupal
Congrats for the first book on views.
I hope there will be new release of this book for drupal 6.
Drupal 6
If you're looking for a Drupal 6 reference, you can read some of the rough cuts of the book being written by Earl & Lynette Miles (The author of views and his wife) here: http://my.safaribooksonline.com/9780321620354
Michelle
Congratulation for the new book!!
I am a new user and i have got a few drupal 6 books, would prefer to read the current drupal version 6 or even 7's books. I am sure, you can make a new version a lot quicker this time and i am looking forward to your new books.
I bought the book an got it a
I bought the book an got it a week ago. Had not seen that it was for Drupal 5, so I was first quite shocked when I noticed the 5... Indeed nobody should start any new sites on Drupal 5 anymore and views for Drupal 6 is very different.
But I also have quite a bit of sites on Drupal 5 and the book has a very nice overview of things you can do with views and gave me some new ideas (which I will try out in Drupal 6...). A lot of the basic concepts of Views 1 still apply for Views 2 so are still valid. But if you're new to Drupal and have never worked with views 1 on Drupal 5 I would not recommend the book. I think that only people that are familiar with both views 1 and 2 will be able to notice the difference between what's still valid and useful for Drupal 6 and what is old views 1 principles and code that cannot be used anymore.
I also really hope the author could make a Drupal 6/Views 2 version of the book as its full with really nicely worked out practical examples.
KOBA - Drupal Webdesign & Webdevelopment
Yeah Drupal 5 still rocks,
Yeah Drupal 5 still rocks, you know it...
Fantastic book for newby and old fork 6,7
I have read this book because i was new to drupal and views being one of the engines for creating a drupal site. this book was fantastic, i did things i could never have imagined.
My website is a drupal 6 site. and i did not find any problem using this book as a reference for my drupal 6 site. the info is the same. so if you have a drupal 6 site this book will still give you what you need. Give a man fish and he will eat for the whole day... Teach a man how to fish and he will eat for ever .
Teach a some one views and he/she can constract one of the best content managment websites, your limit is your imagination. so the book being written for 5 will stil anable you to built any drupal site (6,7,8...)
Note: this is not a sales pitch for the author of this book, but i just wanted new users to see past the version (drupal 5) the book was written for, and to emphasise that the book made wonders for my drupal 6 site.
Thanks
Cool. Your "fantastic" review warms my heart.
In my comment I minded the same but ...
Cool,
I admire comments that are positive and not confusing as "someone" answered my previous positive comment "as a User" and not a coder and because they just are still Angry with me or they do completely missunderstand because they only look at facts from one point of view and experience and do not read with a sense of comprehension.
Thank You @samkat12
Firstly, I'd like to
Firstly, I'd like to congratulate you Marjorie. As an author myself, I appreciate the effort that is required to get something on the shelves, and I hope that you are proud of what you've achieved.
My advice would be that, if you want to write another book on the same subject, do NOT update the book for Drupal 6.x as some commenters have suggested. Instead, start writing now about Drupal 7. Even though you won't be able to test finished code yet, there's no reason why you can't already see some of the changes that are likely to come about. Look at the latest builds and the issue queues so that you're ahead of the game for when it gets released.
Just my thoughts, anyway.
skip over?
NO! do not skip over drupal 6, please!
Congratulations, Marjorie. I
Congratulations, Marjorie. I am sure many drupalers will find this book useful.
Congratulations on the Book!
Congratulations on the book, the thrill of seeing it on your desk, and holding it in your hands. Technology moves so fast, but I find a good, well written book will can still be used for many revisions! Good Luck on the next book or project!
Indeed...
I'm still using Robert Douglass' 4.something book as a resource! :)
Congratulations Margie! I
Congratulations Margie! I know how hard you worked in this thing – it's a great achievement. (How did I miss this post until now?)
As a full-time Drupal developer working primarily on Drupal 5 sites, I welcome this book and will order it right away. We all like new toys, and I'm psyched to build sites with D6 and Views 2, but as some have mentioned above it can be slow or difficult for established sites to move to the next Drupal version, and that's where I'm finding myself on 2 projects. We use Views extensively, and I'm sure I will find some great information and tips here.
I hope you're getting some well-deserved R & R in Panama! Thanks again for this great contribution to the Drupal community.
Congratulations for your
Congratulations for your press! May i read your D6 book : )
Congrats and thanks for
Congrats and thanks for sharing your xp! This book looks nice.
how do we put the heat on
how do we put the heat on packt to put out a views 2 recipie book? just start writing them?
.
merlinofchaos (the author of views) and his wife are already writing a book on Views, CCK, and Panels. Given that they've been at it for some time, that's going to be the Views 2 book that comes out the soonest. Unless, of course, there's someone out there writing one that hasn't told merlinofchaos about it, but it would be pretty silly to write a book on a module without discussing it with the author of that module.
Michelle
Proud Aunt
Thanks all, for all your comments on the book.
I wanted to share that my nephew is featured today for his tech acumen on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. Ari (AriX) was a Drupal GHOP participant a few years ago when he was 13. He was well-mentored then by Angie Byron (webchick), and his usability work yielded a few D6 patches. He turned 15 last week. He's a terrific kid (hacking for good cause, hopefully!), and he makes his aunt proud.
This book looks nice, i don't
This book looks nice, i don't read yet. Congrats for your work!