Inserting "sponsored content" into a fixed position in a view

Question

So this is an interesting scenario I'm faced with. Lets say I have a content type called Article. Within that content type there is a term that is tagged as "sponsored." The content type also holds other tags like Chicago, Seattle, San Fran, Etc.

The View I have built is simply time based and shows a feed based on time published of all articles. However I want some special functionality for any article that is tagged as "sponsored." At the moment the feed looks like this...

1) tag

2) tag

3) tag

4) tag

5) tag

6) tag

This means that if an article is tagged as sponsored is simply falls down the list as new articles are added. What I'd like to have happen instead is always FIX the 2 latest sponsored articles (maybe in a node queue) in the second and fifth position. All other articles without the sponsored tag would fall off as normal based on time while the sponsored articles would stay. So you'd get

1) tag

Sponsored

3) tag

4) tag

Sponsored

6)

Can this even be done in views? Should I just think about adding it to the view template file in a custom manor? Thanks

Answer 1

I found a pretty great solution that i hope others can use. I simply made a new view with my list of sponsored content in a node queue. I then used the function views_embed_view inside my view template of content and displayed each block at a certain row ID whick looked a bit like this:

<?php foreach ($rows as $id => $row): ?>
  <div<?php if ($classes_array[$id]) { print ' class="' . $classes_array[$id] .'"';  } ?>>
<?php print $row; ?>
 </div>
 <?php if ($id == 3): ?>
<?php print views_embed_view('sponsored_content','block_1'); ?>     
 <?php endif; ?>
 <?php if ($id == 8): ?>
<?php print views_embed_view('sponsored_content','block_2'); ?>
 <?php endif; ?> 

Answer 2

I think that you can solve this using the Views UI.

I would probably create a view for your content, containing one page display and two attachments like this:

• The main view display can hold the 2 sponsored items (appropriate filters needed)
• The first attachment display would filter out sponsored items and can hold the first 4 normal items.
• The second attachment display would also filter out sponsored items and can display the next number of normal items. For this you can use the offset setting in the pager options, see the screenshot

The first attachment display would be configured to appear before the main content (which are the sponsored items) and the second attachment display would be configured to appear after the main content.

Answer 3

You can produce a block in a custom module, using hook_block_info() and hook_block_view() and a content callback for the block, like so:

/**
 * Implements hook_block_info().
 */
function YOUR_MODULE_block_info(){
  $blocks = array();
  $blocks['YOUR_BLOCK_DELTA'] = array(
    'info' => t('NICE NAME FOR YOUR BLOCK');
    'cache' => DRUPAL_CACHE_PER_PAGE,
  )
  return $blocks;
}

/**
 * Implements hook_block_view().
 */
function YOUR_MODULE_block_view($delta = '') {
  $block = array();
  switch($delta){
    case 'YOUR_BLOCK_DELTA':
      $block['subject'] = 'YOUR BLOCK TITLE';
      $block['content']['markup'] = your_block_callback();
      break;
  }
  return $block;
}    
function your_block_callback() {
      $position = 3;
      $sponsored = YOUR_SPONSORED_CONTENT;
      $query = db_select('node', 'n')
        ->fields('n', array('nid'))
        ->condition('n.status', 1)
        ->condition('n.type', 'YOUR_CONTENT_TYPE');
      $result = $query->execute();
      $return = '';
      $i = 1;
      foreach ($result as $r) {
         $node = node_load($r->nid);
          $teaser = node_view($node, 'teaser');
          if ($i == $position) {
            $return .= $sponsored;
          }
        $i++;
        $return .= render($teaser);
      }
      return $return;
    }

Replace all dummy text like YOUR_BLOCK_MACHINE_NAME with your own names, and place this in your custom module's .module file. You'll have to add some code to fill in YOUR_SPONSORED_CONTENT. This will produce a list of teasers. You'll have to add conditions and other logic to the $query, of course.can