User Friendly Entity Reference Select Lists Using Views, Views Entity View Widget, and References Dialog

Hello there! My name is Chris Hoffman (hoff331 on Drupal.org) Graphic Designer and Front-end Developer (yes, I know I am using PowerPoint) Working with Drupal for 3 Years Find me and my work at www.GetJumpstartNow.com (available for freelance)

Situation (3 assumptions) User has to create a node (Concert) that references another node (Performers) Referenced node type (Performers) has a lot of nodes (i.e. options) We want to provide the user with an user- friendly way to find/select referenced nodes

Preview Site Performer Content Type title body musical genre (taxonomy) Concert Content Type title body performers (entity reference)

Our Options (modules) Views (Entity Reference View Display) Entity Reference View Widget Reference Dialog Others not covered… Multiple Selects, Chosen, Dynamic Multiselect, etc. Each one has positives and negatives!

Option 1: Views Positives Entity Reference comes with a view display Great for filtering lists of referenced nodes (before the options before user sees them) Great for adding node fields to select options ex.) <option>Performer – genre</option> Pass arguments from node to view (not covered) Negatives Cannot group content (i.e. by genre) Cannot use exposed filters

How To Create an “Entity Reference” view display Filter, sort, etc. view as normal Select view in Entity Reference Field settings Pass in additional arguments

Demo Views

Option 2: Ent. Ref. View Widget Positives Also great for filtering and adding content to select options Able to Group nodes Great for e-Commerce Negatives Hard to style – the view renders the node, the rendered node is controlled via the display manager (to customize display use .tpl or similar)

How To Configure “Ent. Ref. View Widget” view mode (i.e. full, teaser, etc.) via display manager Create an “Ent. Ref. View Widget” view display Filter, sort, etc. view as normal Select view in Entity Reference Field settings (this will override settings below)

Demo Ent. Ref. Views Widget

Option 3: Reference Dialog Positives Allows for inline entity creation combined with automatic entity reference (not possible using IEF) Allows for inline entity editing Search Dialog page (created using views) can be formatted, filtered, and grouped Negatives Module is a bit buggy (still in alpha) Requires lots of styling to make Search Dialog page effective

How To Set entity reference field to Autocomplete widget Select which “dialogs” to add to field (Edit, Add, and/or Search) If “Search Dialog” enabled, you must create a “Reference dialog Search” view display Associate the view to entity reference field Filter, sort, etc. view as normal

DEMO Reference Dialog

Other Options Multiple Selects Chosen Dynamic Multiselect See article by Lullabot: http://www.lullabot.com/blog/articles/entity reference-multiselectors

Questions?