Is it possible to prevent a View from executing until the user has chosen filters?

Question

I have a rather complicated View (created with the Views module) with about a dozen filters on it, all exposed to the user. The View is very heavy on CPU, and I would like to prevent it from running until the user has applied his filter choices.

One suggestion for dealing with this is to make a filter "Required": then the exposed filter will be empty when the View is first run and as a result will force the user to apply filter values explicitly.

The problem is that the filters are almost all dropdown lists, so they get a value applied automatically and don't therefore stop the View from running. Does anyone know some other way to do this?

Answer 1

I'm assuming that for suggesting an answer to your "Does anyone know some other way to do this?", it's OK to also suggest another "module" (instead of just another "way") ...

The Forena module might possibly be a valid alternative for you to consider. For more info about this module, refer to either of these links:

• its Community Documentation.
• its Demo site, which includes Reporting Samples and Documentation about the module (also included in a site where the module gets installed).

In this specific case, you could consider transforming your "complicated View" into appropriate Forena data blocks (SQL queries) and custom reports (and/or charts ...). And for those reports to be generated (and the SQL queries to be executed), you could consider using the various Forena features related to "Report Parameters". A few more details about these Report Parameters:

• refer to this (extremely basic) demo sample that uses such report parameter.
• refer to this relevant part of the documentation (related to report parameters).