Making custom fields available to views module

Question

I have gone through tons of reading... I even went into drupal archivess looking for help :(

I have defined my own content types and fields as well as my own db tables. I want to be able to display these fields using views module in drupal 6.

This is the coding I have done so far:

function svm_mail_views_tables() {
  //Define the groups table
  $table['svm_mail_groups'] = array(
      'name' => 'svm_mail_groups',
      'join' => array(
          'left' => array(
              'table' => 'node',
              'field' => 'nid',
              ),
          'right' => array(
              'field' => 'nid',
              ),
          ),
      'fields' => array(
          'group_id' => array(
              'name' => t('SVM: Group ID'),
              'help' => t('The group id'),
              'sortable' => TRUE,
              ),
          ),
      'sorts' => array(
          'group_id' => array(
              'name' => t('Group ID'),
              'help' => t('The Group ID')
              ),
          ),
      );
  return $table;
}

I still don't have this available in my views module when building a view.

Can anyone help me out here and tell where I'm going wrong?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

If you want to add custom database tables in a view, you need to let views know about it by invoking hook_views_data() http://blog.menhir.be/2008/10/22/expose-database-fields-to-views-in-a-custom-drupal-module/

There is also documentation for this within the views module.

It looks like you are on the right track but your function name is _tables() instead of _data().

Answer 2

As acouch pointed out, you need to implement hook_views_data(). The Drupal API documentation has a good example, as well as the Drupal 6 views online help.