views pass argument for number of records to display to pager contextual filter?

Question

Drupal 7.

Is it possible to pass an argument to the contextual filter to limit number of items to display in a View from the UI?

IOW: can you pass an argument that replicates the Number Of Items portion of the Pager?

I have a node form which uses View Fields to display a view of related items. I want to pass an argument via the Field Display which limits the # of records.

If this must be done programmatically, how do I hook into the view 'contextually'... ie. so that the hook overrides the Number Of Items when the visitor is on a particular page (a Node of a certain Content Type.)

Answer 1

I don't think it's possible through the Views interface. But I think you could probably do it through a small custom module.

function MYMODULE_views_pre_build(&$view) {
  if ($view->name == 'view_name') {
    $limit = $arg(1) //where $arg is the argument from your url
    $view->items_per_page = $limit;
  }
}

Answer 2

In depth you can do something like this:

/**
 * Implementation of hook_views_pre_build().
 */
function modulename_views_pre_build(&$view) {
  // Offset: starting point (position) of the subset of nodes
  if (!empty($_REQUEST['offset'])) {
    $offset = (int) $_REQUEST['offset'];
    if ($offset >= 0) {
      $view->set_offset($offset);
    }
  }
  // Limit: is the number of nodes to return
  if (!empty($_REQUEST['limit'])) {
    $limit = (int) $_REQUEST['limit'];
    if ($limit >= 0) {
      $view->set_items_per_page($limit);
    }
  }
}

Now when you'll execute your view the URL should be something like this:

http://an-awesome-drupal-site/your-view-path?limit=25&offset=5 and its done ;-)