Beginning Drupal 8

Chapter 9 ■ Views
There are additional styling options, but in most instances leaving the default values for those options is
sufficient. Click the Apply button to complete this step in the process.
A table with a single column is pretty boring, really nothing more than just a list. So to spice up the
table let’s add two additional fields, one for the date that the article was created, and another for the tags
associated with the article. We’ll add each field as a separate column. To add the fields, click the Add button
in the Fields section of the page (see Figure 9-3), which reveals the list of every field available to display on
our view. To simplify finding the fields that we want, enter “created” in the Search box at the top of the list of
fields, and from the list of results that is displayed, check the box next to the “Content: Authored on” field.
Select the For option of “This block (override)” to prevent this field from being added to all of the other
view displays that we’ve created, and then click the “Apply (this display)” button. The next screen provides
options to configure how the “Authored on” field will be rendered, including the label displayed for that
field, CSS styling options, what to do when there isn’t a value present for a given article, and other options.
Leave all the values set to their defaults for the remaining options and click Apply.
Views Add-on Modules
The Views module itself is a powerful tool for rendering content on your site. When you combine Views
with other specialized modules, you get a whole new level of powerful capabilities. There are several “must
have” Views add-on modules that you may wish to consider as you build out your site. Here are a few of my
favorites:
• Views Slideshow (www.drupal.org/project/views_slideshow): This module
provides a simple-to-use interface for creating views that display content as a
slideshow. There are a number of slideshow modules for Views, but this happens to
be one of the easiest to use.
• Calendar (www.drupal.org/project/calendar): Need to display events on a
calendar? This is the module for you. It provides you with a rich set of tools for
creating and displaying any content that contains a date field and date values on a
calendar (day, week, month, year). It’s one of the must-have modules on all my sites.
• JCarousel (www.drupal.org/project/jcarousel): Most of my projects involve some
form of displaying content in a carousel. This module makes it simple to create a list
of content items and render them as a carousel.
• Draggable Views (www.drupal.org/project/draggableviews): Want to provide
an administrative interface that allows content editors to rearrange the items
that appear in a view? This module provides a simple drag-and-drop interface to
rearrange items in your view.
• GMap (www.drupal.org/project/gmap): Want to render content that has geographic
(address) information on a map? This module integrates Google Maps with Views to
provide an easy-to-use solution for rendering content items on a map.
• Views data export (www.drupal.org/project/views_data_export): Want to export
content from your site into a CSV file, spreadsheet, Word document, text file, or
XML? This module provides the ability to do just that.
There are also add-on modules for Views that we did not cover in this section. Please visit
www.drupal.org/project/project_module and click the Views link in the categories listed in the right
column. At the time of writing, there are 756 contributed modules just for Views! Browse through the list
(remembering to look to see if there is a Drupal 8 version of the modules you may be interested in). People
have created many amazing capabilities for Views.
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