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(notes from a session at DrupalCon 2010)

presented by Larry Garfield (crell)

• overview: how Views works
  
  • Views 3 is still alpha, so caveat emptor
  • a tool for making lists of things, not just content but anything, even data from external sources
  • all views are conceptually a spreadsheet, with fields being columns.
  • the "what" level: filters, arguments, fields, sorts, relations
  • the "how" layer: styles, row plugins, pager, new area handler
  • the "where" layer: display, access, exposed filter form
• query structure overview
  
  • fields are SELECT, filters and arguments are WHERE, sorts are ORDER BY, relationships are JOINs
• plugins vs. handlers
  
  • plugins are swappable components
  • types of plugins: themeable (display, style, row style, pager, exposed form) and non-themeable (access, arg default, arg validator, caching, query)
  • handler -- can be only one
• live demo (in which something will go horribly wrong!)
  
  • example: Views Tree style plugin for displaying hierarchical structures
  • module calls views_tree_views_api() to declare itself to Views, then supporting functions to do the work
  • has been known to work with trees of hundreds of nodes up to 30 levels deep!
  • Views Link Area module is a handler, provides a "links" area for views similar to the one on nodes