How to quickly theme a view?

Question

I've defined a view with the CCK and View 2 modules. I would like to quickly define a template specific to this view. Any tutorial or information on this? What are the files I need to modify?

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Here are my findings: (Edited)

In fact there are two ways to theme a view : the "field" way and the "node" way. In "edit View", you can choose "Row style: Node", or "Row style: Fields".

• with the "Node" way, you can create a node-contentname.tpl.php which will be called for each node in the view. You'll have access to your cck field values with $field_name[0]['value']. (edit2) You can use node-view-viewname.tpl.php wich will be only called for each node displayed from this view.
• with the "Field" way, you add a views-view-field--viewname--field-name-value.tpl.php for each field you want to theme individually.

Thanks to previous responses, I've used the following tools :

• In the 'Basic Settings' block, the 'Theme: Information' to see all the different templates you can modify.
• The Devel module's "Theme developer" to quickly find the field variable names.
• View 2 documentation, especially the "Using Theme" page.

Answer 1

You should also check out Semantic Views. For simple Views theming, it is really handy.

Answer 2

In my opinion the simplest way to decide which template file to use for theming the views is : 1) Click on admin/build/views/edit/ViewName -> Basic Settings -> Theme

Clicking this would list all the possible template files. Highlighted (File names in Bold) files indicate which template file is being used to do theme what part of the view. After incorporating the required changes in the relevant view template file RESCAN .. now you should be able to see the changed template file highlighted .

Answer 3

One tip:

You'll likely have a number of views which require similar formatting. Creating templates for each of these views and copying them creates a nightmare of code branching - if you're asked to change the whole look and feel of the site (implying changing the display of each of these views formatted in this particular way), you have to go back and edit each of these separately.

Instead of using the views interface to select new templates for views, I sometimes simply insert some code branching into a single views file. E.g. for one site in views-view-fields.tpl.php I have:

if($view->name == 'articleList' || $view->name == 'frontList' 
|| $view->name == 'archiveList') {
/* field formatting code */
} else {
/* the default code running here */
}

This then modifies the fields in the way I want only for this family of Views = articleList, frontList and archiveList - and for other views using this template runs the code one normally finds in this template. If the client asks, "Hey, could you make those pages showing the archives & that list on the front page to look more like ( ... )", it's simply a matter of my opening & editing this one file, instead of three different files. Maintenance becomes much more quick & friendly.

Answer 4

My shortcut option.

1. Go to theme.inc file in YOUR_MODULE_DIR/views/theme/ folder.

2. In the _views_theme_functions function print the $themes variable or put a breakpoint on the last line of the function to see the content of the variable.

Just convert views_view to views-view and __ to -- and add your template extension to get desired file name.

For example if an element of the $themes array is views_view__test_view__block (where test_view is the name of your view) then the name of the template file would be views-view--test_view--block.tpl.php.