Entity Reference field using View to Mask Autocomplete with Last Name

Question

I've posted about this here as well: http://drupal.org/node/1906344

I'm trying to use an Entity Reference field to reference users with a last name field I created on a "Product Page" content type.

You see, whenever you try to reference a user, you're forced to do so with the username. So to get around this, you have to create a view that outputs the last name field from the profile and then use that view in a way that accepts an argument to key off of (i.e. - the last name).

I've created my view and on the views page, this view works. But when I use the "Filter by an entity reference view" to attach my view, I discover that it doesn't work on the node-add page. I'll start typing a last name that's associated with a registered user and, well, nothing comes up. The reference type I indicated in the "Target type" is user and the view isn't anything special: it's just an "Entity Reference" view type set to accept 1 contextual filter (the last name) and subsequently outputs the respective users if that argument matches the last name field value(s). So I don't know what's going on here...

Here's my basic setup: - Drupal 7.x - Entity API 7.x-1.0 - Entity Connect 7.x-1.0-beta2 - Entity Reference 7.x-1.0 - Views 7.x-3.5

I'm using Entity Connect to provide the ability to create the user if he or she doesn't exist. Otherwise, the field should reference something--which it currently doesn't.

Any help on this is appreciated and please let me know if you need more information.

Answer 1

Remove the contextual filter from your Entity Reference view.

The view should have all the available options. The autocomplete widget for the Entity Reference field will filter the available options based on the user input. If you change the widget type to "Check boxes/radio buttons" you can see the available options which may help diagnose the issue.