Multiple Relationships in CiviCRM Views Integration

Question

I have been trying to set up a Drupal View of a a 3-way relationship in CiviCRM.

The view I wanted was that showed a list of contacts that are provided services from the current user's employer, as below

(current user) contact a => (is employed by) => organisation => (is a provider of) => contact c

I created a view of CiviCRM Contacts, and could not see a way of getting this relationship to display what I wanted without building a custom module, which is explained below.

Answer 1

You can do this with a custom module and using the preprocess views hook to pass in the contextual filter. The filters are passed into the $args[] variable.

You also may need to enable multiple values in a contextual filter, if you have more than one relationship from Contact A to Contact B, in this case this is multiple employers. This is under Contextual Filters > Advanced > Allow multiple values.

You do not add % to the path as you would normally do with a contextual filter as we are programmatically inserting it.

Create a custom Drupal module with the following code

/**
* @implements hook_views_pre_view().
*/
function HOOK_views_pre_view(&$view, &$display_id, &$args){

if($view->name == "my_view") {
      // Check that we are altering the correct view based on and $view->name
      civicrm_initialize();
      require_once 'api/api.php';
      //get the matching civi id for the current user
      //This is using Civicrm version 4.4.6

      global $user;
      //first get the current user's Civicrm record
      $params = array(
         'version' => 3,
         'sequential' => 1,
         'uf_id' => $user->uid,
      );
      /*The contact ID is in $result['values'][0]['contact_id']*/
      $result = civicrm_api('UFMatch', 'get', $params);

      $params = array(
          'version' => 3,
          'sequential' => 1,
          'relationship_type_id' => 5, /*get your relationship ID from /civicrm/admin*/
          'contact_id_a' => $result['values'][0]['contact_id'],
      );
      $result = civicrm_api('Relationship', 'get', $params);

      //temp stores the string which will be passed to the $args[] array
      $temp = "";

      //loop through the a => b relationships, and append all the ids of contact b
      foreach ($result[values] as $key => $value ) {
         if ($key > 0)
            $temp .= "+";
         $temp .= $value['contact_id_b'];
      }
      // populate the $args contextual filters array with the ids.
      $args[] = $temp;
   }
}

Answer 2

You can do this without a custom module. In Views Relationships your first add a Views Relationship for the CiviCRM Relationship, and then add the Contact at 'the other end' of the Relationship. So for each Civi Relationship you will create 2 Views Relationship. Hence to daisy chain A to B to C, you will have 4 Views Relationships

Not easy to explain especially when both Views and CiviCRM are using the term Relationship.

Add Views Relationship 1 (VR1) of type "Connects a contact (as contact A) to a relationship." (eg employer of) Add Views Relationship 2 (VR2) of type "The contact B" use select VR1 as the 'Relationship'

So you have now connected person X to Org Y

Add Views Relationship 3 (VR3) of type "Connects a contact (as contact B) to a relationship." (eg Provider of) - select VR2 as the 'Relationship' Add Views Relationship 4 (RV4) of type "The contact A" select VR3 as the 'Relationship'

So now you should have connected person X to Org Y and then Org Y to person Z.

For creating RV3, you need to work out whether to use "starting from A" or B as it will depend on how you created your "is a provider of" Relationship. Clear? Not that easy to explain ;-)