How to theme (lots of) views the Agaric Way
Key words and phrases
avoid redundant Views code in template.php view callback views phptemplateTags
Description
I3IVIIVI: now, take a look at the template.php file
(10:20:54 AM) Dan Hak: you took out repeating code?
(10:21:15 AM) I3IVIIVI: yes, exactly
(10:21:22 AM) I3IVIIVI: the code that you knew was repeating
(10:21:35 AM) I3IVIIVI: because you weren't even copying it from the wizard anymore
(10:21:49 AM) I3IVIIVI: you were just changing that one spot :-)
(10:22:11 AM) I3IVIIVI: it was actually harder to refactor than I thought. I shouldn't have done it now
(10:22:50 AM) I3IVIIVI: So you can see the series of functions that you just have to copy and change in two places to make a call to another template
(10:23:39 AM) I3IVIIVI: we have to set up equal test environments and do a performance test with another setup, where views will simply use a template *if* it exists
(10:24:17 AM) I3IVIIVI: if that has decent performance that's really nice, don't have to touch template.php, just make a new views-list-name.tpl.php
Resolution
In template.php – the generic function followed by an example of a specific invocation. Automatically using a views-list-thememe.tpl.php file if it exists is not implemented with this code.
<?php
/**
* Generic function to theme views, invoked by view-specific callbacks.
*
* Based on code generated by the views theming wizard
* Credit to I think Jacob Redding for a NYC DrupalCamp presentation on this
* This function goes in your template.php file
*/
function phptemplate_views_template($template, &$view, &$nodes, &$type) {
$fields = _views_get_fields();
$taken = array();
// Set up the fields in nicely named chunks.
foreach ($view->field as $id => $field) {
$field_name = $field['field'];
if (isset($taken[$field_name])) {
$field_name = $field['queryname'];
}
$taken[$field_name] = true;
$field_names[$id] = $field_name;
}
// Set up some variables that won't change.
$base_vars = array(
'view' => $view,
'view_type' => $type,
);
$items = array();
foreach ($nodes as $i => $node) {
$vars = $base_vars;
$vars['node'] = $node;
$vars['count'] = $i;
$vars['stripe'] = $i % 2 ? 'even' : 'odd';
foreach ($view->field as $id => $field) {
$name = $field_names[$id];
$vars[$name] = views_theme_field('views_handle_field', $field['queryname'], $fields, $field, $node, $view);
if (isset($field['label'])) {
$vars[$name . '_label'] = $field['label'];
}
}
$items[] = _phptemplate_callback('views-list-' . $template, $vars);
}
if ($items) {
return theme('item_list', $items);
}
}
/**
* Create functions to catch views' check for theme overrides, and
* pass on to a general function to call templates to output views.
*
* assumed faster than checking if a .tpl.php file exists for every view?
*/
function phptemplate_views_view_list_userpicbar(&$view, &$nodes, &$type) {
return phptemplate_views_template('userpicbar', $view, $nodes, $type);
}
?>
Nat of OpenFlows replaces this:
<?phpif ($items) {
return theme('item_list', $items);
}
?>
With a simple
<?phpreturn $items;
?>
This gives him full access to wrapping the code in each list item template file, and from wherever you call the view you can put other wrappers. In particular, it means each themed item is not wrapped in
<li>tags, and can be wrapped in custom divs or anything else.For now I'm going to leave output as lists, argument being that this is semantic markup, and make Dan do the extra work of theming the lists to not display. But I'm thinking we can put an extra option in here to decide from the calling function whether it's a list or plain output. Nat also had a bit more code and logic in the function that called the "generic view" function, I can't recall what that might have done.