I've received a number of emails since the launch of What Would Drupal Do regarding my personal nodetracker (see the righthand side of the screen, towards the bottom). As a result, I made a post on the drupal.org forums offering to open the nodetracker up to the public, so that people could individually track their own nodes. There was a surprising lack of response, given the number of inquiries I'd received.
I figure there are two probable reasons for this.
1) People want to run a nodetracker on their own sites, not someone else's.
2) Some people were inquiring not because they want a nodetracker per se, but because they are simply curious about how it is set up.
So to satisfy those two groups of people, here is how it's done. It is really an extremely straightforward use of CCK, Panels, and Views. You will need CCK, Panels, Views, and the Views Bonus Pack installed. Drupal 4.7.x is assumed.
Step 1: Set up a CCK type
- At admin >> content >> content types, create a new CCK nodetype called "nodetrack".
- Add an Integer>Textfield field type called "nodeid"
- Add a Text>Textfield field type called "description"
I don't use the CCK Link module here for a reason. You have to go through hoops to extract just the node number from such a field. It is simpler in case like this to work with the node number as text. We will auto-generate our links as we need them.
Now head over to admin >> categories and associated enable a taxonomy vocabulary (or two) to be used with nodes of the type "nodetracker".
You can now create a content of the type "nodetracker" and plug in the drupal.org node id number, title, and a brief description. But we are just getting started. We need a block, and ideally, a full page display.
Head on over to admin >> views, and add a new view. Call it NodeTracker. Under the "Page" fieldset, click on the "Provide Page View" checkbox. Give it a URL alias like nodetracker. For the viewtype, select something along the lines of "Panels: Teasers, 3 Columns". That's the Views Bonus Pack magick. (Thanks merlinofchaos!)
In the "Block" fieldset, click on the checkbox next to "Provide Block". Give it a title, and choose how many node entries you would like to show up in your block view.
Leave the Fields and Arguments fieldsets alone.
Under filters, filter based on
- Node: Type [IS ONE OF] nodetrack
- Node: Published [EQUALS] Yes
Leave Exposed Filters alone.
In the "Sort Criteria" fieldset, add
- Node: Created Time - Descending
Save your view.
Here's the Views export, to save you some time:
$view = new stdClass();
$view->name = 'NodeTracker';
$view->description = 'A list of tracked drupal.org nodes';
$view->access = array (
);
$view->view_args_php = '';
$view->page = TRUE;
$view->page_title = '';
$view->page_header = '';
$view->page_header_format = '1';
$view->page_footer = '';
$view->page_footer_format = '1';
$view->page_empty = '';
$view->page_empty_format = '1';
$view->page_type = 'panels_threecol';
$view->url = 'nodetracker';
$view->use_pager = TRUE;
$view->nodes_per_page = '10';
$view->block = TRUE;
$view->block_title = 'Node Tracker';
$view->block_header = '';
$view->block_header_format = '1';
$view->block_footer = '';
$view->block_footer_format = '1';
$view->block_empty = '';
$view->block_empty_format = '1';
$view->block_type = 'teaser';
$view->nodes_per_block = '12';
$view->block_more = '1';
$view->block_use_page_header = FALSE;
$view->block_use_page_footer = FALSE;
$view->block_use_page_empty = FALSE;
$view->sort = array (
array (
'tablename' => 'node',
'field' => 'created',
'sortorder' => 'DESC',
'options' => '',
),
);
$view->argument = array (
);
$view->field = array (
);
$view->filter = array (
array (
'tablename' => 'node',
'field' => 'type',
'operator' => 'OR',
'options' => '',
'value' => array (
0 => 'content_nodetrack',
),
),
array (
'tablename' => 'node',
'field' => 'status',
'operator' => '=',
'options' => '',
'value' => '1',
),
);
$view->exposed_filter = array (
);
$view->requires = array(node);
$views[$view->name] = $view;Still with me? We're almost there.
Everything is set up, except that things are going to look really ugly. Trust me. Try it. Enable your block and take a look.
We need to theme our teasers. Now, this could probably be handled through the Contemplate module, but I'm a sucker for pain.
Create a file in your theme directory called "node-content_nodetrack.tpl.php". The filename is important. The "nodetrack" bit has to match what you named your CCK type, otherwise PHPTemplate won't know to use it for your node display.
Here's what my node-content_nodetrack.tpl.php file looks like.
<div class="node<?php if ($sticky) { print " sticky"; } ?><?php if (!$status) { print " node-unpublished"; } ?>">
<?php if ($picture) {
print $picture;
}?>
<?php
/* for teasers */
if ($page == 0) {
print '<div class="nodetracker_teaser">';
if ( strstr($_REQUEST['q'], 'nodetracker') ) {
/* nodetracker */
print '<div class="' . $zebra . '">';
print '<small>(#' . $field_nodetrack___nodeid[0][view] . ')</small><BR />';
print '<a href="http://www.drupal.org/node/' . $field_nodetrack___nodeid[0][view] . '">' . $title . '</a><BR />';
print $field_nodetrack___description[0][view] . '<BR />';
if ($terms)
print '<span class="taxonomy">[' . $terms . ']</span><BR />';
print '<BR />';
print '</div><!-- zebra -->';
}
else {
/* default teaser */
print '<div class="' . $zebra . '">';
print '<small>(#' . $field_nodetrack___nodeid[0][view] . ')</small>';
print '<a href="http://www.drupal.org/node/' . $field_nodetrack___nodeid[0][view] . '">' . $title . '</a>';
print '</div><!-- zebra -->';
}
print '</div><!-- nodetracker_teaser -->';
}
else { ?>
<?php if ($submitted) { print '<small>'.$submitted.'</small><br />'; } ?>
<span class="taxonomy"><?php print $terms?></span>
<div class="content">
<?php
print $content;
?>
<?php if ($links) { ?><div class="links">» <?php print $links ?></div><!-- links --><?php } ?>
</div> <!-- content -->
<?php } /* end of else from beginning */ ?>
</div> <!-- node -->I think that got a tad mangled, but you get the idea. More about node.tpl.php files here
*Phew*
Now you can easily add your tracked nodes to your website, provide a block view, RSS feed, and have a nice three column page view complete with clickable taxonomy categorization.
Ta-da.
Great tutorial, thanks. Of course, to make it complete, you would have to write a little bookmarklet to make it possible to submit to it directly from the Drupal site. The http://drupal.org/project/nodeformpopup module makes it relatively painless.