Accessing all VIEW data in a preprocess hook

Question

I have the following hook method:

hook_preprocess_views_view_unformatted(&$vars)

I can obtain the VIEW like so:

$view = $vars['view'];

When I dump this result I can see a complex structure with all the data I need...the VIEW can be iterated via:

foreach ($view->result as $index => $record) 

Each records data (node details) is navigable via the following path:

$record->_field_data['nid']['entity']->field_XXX

I am uneasy accessing these details with the second property in this chain as usually "underscore" represents private...maybe it is just the OO purist in mean telling me it's bad practice and I am defeating OCP. :)

Ultimately I need the ability to iterate my custom fields and this seems to be the only way I can achieve that -- is there not a API which would encapsulate this access for me?

I assumed the $view object itself would have an API to provide traversing methods or at least result iteration, but it doesn't appear that way.

Answer 1

The result array in the Views object contains the row information so yes, if you need to access the results, this is the way to do it.

For example, including:

function YOURMODULE_preprocess_views_view(&$variables) {

  $view=$variables['view'];
  drupal_set_message('<pre>' . print_r($view->result, TRUE) . '</pre>');

}

and then a quick View that just returns node objects would look like this:

and a View that returns fields (in this case just titles) would look like this:

and then when you actually include custom fields, you get that big _field_data array, eg:

but you should also see it in a more top level area of the results as well:

Also, a quick look at views_get_view_result() might shed some more "this is how we do it" confirmation/information on Views results. Also What is the hook to preprocess a view and Changing values in preprocess view function talk about other options available to you in the Views API.