Value Providers

This module is supposed to ease life for developers - if you are none of those, you only want to download this module if another one depends on it. So now that that's sorted out, let's get to the point...

• Did you ever want to extract values from a view, but needed to hardcode it because both column names and result format only apply to your specific view?
• Did you ever want to offer the user to select any Views field that fits the purpose, regardless if it's a CCK field or in a module specific table? And then, execute the view programmatically and retrieve the value in exactly the same target format, regardless of how it appears in the database?

If that is the case then this module is for you. It's a tool to ease programmatic retrieval of Views fields, a format that you can rely on. Need to have the user choose between CCK nodereferences, book parents and Project* projects for an issue? You only need to specify the views table, required columns for the target value and a parse function, and all callers just need to request the "nid" type and are able to use any of the above.

In other words, "Semantic Views". There could be value providers that provide the number of hours for CCK Number or Duration fields, there could be user objects as result values, or some readily rendered HTML output. It all depends on the parse function, there can be any target formats that you desire, assuming that Views provides the fields required to compute those.

In other words, this module aims to make it easy to use Views from your own module's code. Whether it succeeds in that reaching that aim is up to your judgement.

This project was originally provided by zites.net internet solutions and sponsored by IPA (Internet Privatstiftung Austria) as part of the Netidee program.