Contextual Filters and Arguments in Drupal

In the Drupal 6 views screen, Arguments were right in the center of the page:

With Drupal 7, the Arguments area was moved and re-named. There’s now a whole, hidden area of the Views screen that is simply called “Advanced”:

Under that Advanced tab is the “Contextual Filters” area. That is where Arguments have moved to.

Several of the default Views contain contextual filters and would make good starting points to learn more.

Go to Structure > Views and enable both the Archive and Glossary views to see them in action.

The Archive view dynamically organizes content into the month it was published. A normal filter would only allow us to show content from certain months. A contextual filter changes which months it shows, based on the page you’re viewing.

Here’s the contextual filter that makes that possible:

The Glossary view is similar to the Archive, but it dynamically sorts content by the first letter of the title.

An ordinary filter could show all content that starts with A or B, but a contextual filter is flexible enough to show any of those, depending on the context

Here’s the contextual filter for the Glossary:

One of the most common examples of a contextual filter is a calendar created with Views:

In order to functional correctly, the calendar needs a Contextual Filter which pulls from a Date field.

A simple filter would not suffice here because it’s not flexible enough. The user can change between June, July, August and other months. They could even change to view weeks, days or years. Only a contextual filter can adapt automatically to those different displays.

Click here to read our full tutorial on creating a calendar using a Contextual Filter.

A second example of contextual filters involves creating a personalized newsfeed for users. In the View below, the users only see movies that are in genres they have selected:

This is possible because we’ve added a contextual filter for the user. The view is

An ordinary filter would allow us to choose “Action”, “Comedy” or “Romantic” movies, which are set up as taxonomy terms.

However, a contextual filter is flexible enough so that we can dynamically change those taxonomy terms based on the user.

Click here to read our full tutorial on creating personalized content feeds with contextual filters.

This third and more complex example is part of our video class on Views.

In this part of the class, Rod is building a clone of IMDB.com. He wants to automatically show a list of actors who have appeared in the movie that’s showing on the page.

Again, a simple filter would suffice to show a list actors, but not one that can dynamically change based on the main node being displayed. Watch the video to see how it’s done:

Drupal 6 Users

If you are still on Drupal 6, Mustard Seed Media have a very useful video for you:

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