Design and Prototyping for Drupal

Step 6: Setting Up the Contextual Filter

In prior versions of Views, Contextual Filters were called Arguments. The difference between contextual filters and your garden variety Views filter is in its specificity; while you can use standard views filters to select global variables, such as the type of content or whether it’s published, contextual filters use something on the page—usually in the form of some kind of numeric ID, which Drupal attaches to nodes, groups, and taxonomy terms—to determine how it filters the content.

Here’s the basic idea:

• Figure out which component (field, node ID, group ID, etc.) contains the “context” you want to filter on

• Set that up, in a “default” argument

• Publish and prosper

Since we’re basing this view on the “Who’s Hosting” field, my first instinct was to create the contextual filter based on that field. However, the argument needs a default value to work, and the option that made the most sense, User ID from URL, turns up either the node’s author or nothing at all, depending on which settings you choose (Figure 12-27).

Figure 12-27. Yeah...okay, no

After an hour or two of trying different things and banging my head against the keyboard, I finally gave up and set up my contextual filter with a default value of the node’s author. This, at least, had a value that showed up, and I could work on other pieces of the project while I stewed over my failure.

It was ...