By juansa on

Hi there, I think it would be great to create a module to provide node comparison functionality on user request. I guess CCK is quite handy in this case as well as taxonomy. Only nodes of a certain type/category could be compared.

The output should be something like:

ronaldinho zidane ronaldo henry beckam
age
height
weight
goals
first game
fifa ranking

User should be able to order node by field (row), ascending and descending.

So, an example use case would be:
1. user visits a node about some football player
2. user clics on "Compare this [node type name] to others".
3. user selects one or more (compatible) comparable nodes from a list.
4. user sees a table as show above, displaying the information about the nodes being compared.

All comments welcome.

⋅ Categories: Drupal 5.x

Comments

TKS’s picture

TKS commented

Hopefully some helpful hints will turn up at http://drupal.org/node/123132...

dzwestwindsor’s picture

dzwestwindsor commented

that links back to here.

updated link please?

Any updates on a functionality like this?

coworksbe’s picture

coworksbe commented

This function would interest me, is there any news about it? I was thinking about doing it with a kind of user-defined-view, but I'm not that advanced with drupal yet...

faunapolis’s picture

faunapolis commented

http://www.faunapolis.org/

westlion’s picture

westlion commented

Hi faunapolis,

I am learning Drupal now, Have a simple question here, about your content part layout, how do you design and put into drupal about article sharing block?

You have title, location, date of seeing, picture, article, and even those third party tool function.

I don't know how to design and code this thing?

Thanks very much.

WT

faunapolis’s picture

faunapolis commented

Westlion,

The theme is the slash theme.

The core functionality of the site is done using the following modules:

- CCK (content construction kit)
- Views
- Contemplate (this allows you to arrange CKK fields the way you want them within the node)
- Taxonomy
- Pathauto

Search the drupal forums the first three modules in the list, and you will find a lot of posts describing how to integrate them.

Drupal is not necessarily the easiest CMS to start, but I wouldn't had been able to get away doing so much without programming if it wasn't for drupal.

http://www.faunapolis.org/

westlion’s picture

westlion commented

I am reading the related materials now, and start to understand a little bit.

Nice site.

WT

dzwestwindsor’s picture

dzwestwindsor commented

hey, its been 3 years.

Did you get this working?

I'm looking for the same functionality

brycesenz’s picture

brycesenz commented

I did something similar a while ago. My solution was to use the create a view that would take as arguments all of the node IDs that you wanted to compare. So if you sent it the arguments "213,244", it would create a view of those two nodes that displayed the fields you wished to compare.

Then, I created a second view using Views Bulk Operations that would list all of my nodes, with the ability to select multiple nodes on which to perform an action. I then created a custom action to send the selected nodes to my first view, thereby linking the two views together. After a bit of theming, it looked nice enough and suited my needs well.

The only thing I would caution is that my method was a way to display selected nodes side by side for the user to perform his own comparison of similar fields. It did not calculate any new values or provide any new data based on the nodes selected.

summit’s picture

summit commented

Hi @brycesenz,
Are you willing to share your views?
Greetings, Martijn

brycesenz’s picture

brycesenz commented

I'd be willing to help someone try to set up something similar (I did it in D6, but it should be the same idea in D7). My actual views themselves are gone though. It was part of a proof of concept piece that I did but was eventually scrapped. Sorry.

brycesenz’s picture

brycesenz commented

I actually just helped another Drupaler with this same task, so here's a better outline of my steps in D6. Nothing drastic should change in the D7 version, but I haven't actually gone through those motions.

1. Created a view. This will be our final view of the selected nodes.
- Make sure that it accepts Node:NID as an argument (allow multiple terms per argument)
- As a default, show all results, so that we can verify that it is working later on. You can always change this later.
- Create a page view with whatever path you want (I chose "view_demo").

2. Create a VBO view. It should list all nodes and accept no arguments.
- Create a page view with a different path (I chose "vbo_demo")
- Give it whatever action you want now - we will change that later.

3. Verify that each view shows up correctly on its page, just to make sure.

4. Now go to 'Actions' and create a custom action from "Pass objects as arguments to a page..."
- Now add as the URL for that action our final view URL. In my case, that was "view_demo".

5. Edit our VBO view, and change the action to the new action we've just created. Select "Skip confirmation step" for a better user experience.

Functionally, that should be all you need to do. It won't look so pretty, so prepare to do some CSS-ing, but it works.

ravisagar’s picture

ravisagar commented

Hey Guys,

I implemented a functionality to compare multiple nodes using flags, cck, views and few other useful modules like Views Flag Refresh and Views Hack.

Today I posted a blog about it as well: http://www.slashnode.in/blog/create-node-compare-functionality-using-vie...

zilla’s picture

zilla commented

wow, you have authored the most amazing walkthrough for this scenario that i've seen in eons - and it's a very common request or desired feature.

would you mind adding it to the cookbook or drupal site guide/documentation? my guess is that it will translate quite well to d7 (was just double checking assorted things on there, only possibly holdback is some beta status around views hacks)

nice article!

ravisagar’s picture

ravisagar commented

Yes I would love to do that. Let me know how can I add it to cookbook or drupal guide. Yes it can be implemented in D7 as well, both views_flag_refresh and views_hacks (beta) module have D7 version.

allio_froggio’s picture

allio_froggio commented

This saved me hours of work. Thank you so much!

Only one question - apparently in version 2.x, there's an option to allow anonymous users to flag content using Session API. Don't supposed you want to add a section on making that happen? :)

I'm about to start that, so if it's easy, I'll post the solution.

Thanks again!

allio_froggio’s picture

allio_froggio commented

Ha! It's as simple as enabling Session API and editing your flag to include the anonymous role.

Awesome.