embed

If you would like to theme your view output (and I mean hard core theming) or would like to add a view into your module generated page or just like to pass in some arguments from you modules into a view, this very quick tutorial is for you.

In Drupal 6 all the views are objects. That means if we load them into a variable, we can do pretty much anything with them. Create your view. This is the first step. If you like, add Arguments to the view, so we can pass in variables when we execute the view.

You can add a page display or a block display if you like. Both has some advantage and disadvantage. If you create a page display, you have to specify a path, but if you will only use this view inside your module, there is no point doing this. If you use the block display, you will have a nice array with two items in it. 'subject' and 'content'. Clearly the subject is the title of the block and the content, well, it is just the content. :)

Create the page menu hook in your module. This is easy, just use standard Drupal code. (if you need help, look up the hook_menu on http://api.drupal.org/api/6)

Create the page function your hook_menu will call. This is just a function returning some standard HTML code coming for your customised view.

Loading the view is very simple really:

$view = views_get_view('[view name]');

The view name is always the main name of your view. (Not the display name.) Now, depending on which display you have added to the view, use block_1 for Block Display or use page_1 for Page Display. If you have not created a display (yes, you can do this as well.) just simply use default as a display name.

The following code will execute the view's selected Display. This is part of the view object.

$content = $view->execute_display('[display name]', array([arguments]));

The $content variable could be called $block if you used a Block Display or $page if you have used a Page Display. Page will change the Title of the page, Block will eventually have a block title, header, footer, etc. (This depends on how and where you want to show your view. The arguments are more interesting: You always have to pass in an array of arguments. The item(s) inside the array have to be a string. Plus sing means AND and the space means OR between the arguments.