Beginning Drupal 8

Chapter 9 ■ Views
Figure 9-3. The Views edit page
At first glance, the form for defining a view looks complex and overwhelming. Fortunately, looks
are deceiving.
The first thing you’ll see at the top of the view configuration form is a Displays list. In our example view,
we have a Page and a Block. One of the powerful features of Views is the ability to have a single view render
multiple displays. Examples of the types of displays that we might use for recent articles include
• A full page display that displays all the details of every Article published on the site.
• A block that lists the five most recent Articles, displaying only the title for each article.
• Another block that lists the five most recent Articles, displaying the title and a
shortened version of the article body.
• Yet another block that lists the ten most recent Articles, displaying the title, the date
the article was published, the author who wrote the article, and a shortened version
of the article body.
This single view can be used to create several different types of displays that each display Articles in
slightly different formats.
We will start by defining the two displays, Page and Block, that were automatically created by Views
when we selected the options on the first configuration screen (refer to Figure 9-2). We’ll add to that list of
displays after we have the first two working.
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