Creating custom views sort handler

Posted by Alun on February 18, 2010 at 5:58pm

Hi guys & gals,

I've been playing around with Views and getting it integrated into my module recently. Everything is working great - I am managing a sports league, so can now get people to display their leagues using views. Most of the information is stored in databases for simple retrieval, but I had to create custom field handlers for some, as some of the fields do not have fields in the table - for example I have the following table structure to store a teams position in a league

Standings
won
lost
drawn
goals_for
goals_against
bonus_points

As you can see, fields such as games played, and points scored are not in the table, as they are calculated using a custom handler (games played = won + lost + drawn)
My points fields is causing the most bother for me at the moment. I calculate points by multiplying games won, drawn and lost with values from another table. I managed to get the field displayed using a custom handler (I will show the code below) but I need to sort by this field, as teams are ranked in their league based on the points they have. Since there is no value for points in the database, I will need to create a custom sort handler to deal with this problem, but how exactly do I go about this?

I look forward to your help. The relevant custom handler code for the points field is below. Thanks!

from leaguesite_handler_field_points.inc

<?php
class leaguesite_handler_field_points extends views_handler_field_numeric{
    function construct(){
      parent::construct();
       $this->additional_fields['won'] = 'won';
    $this->additional_fields['lost'] = 'lost';
    $this->additional_fields['drawn'] = 'drawn';
    $this->additional_fields['bonus'] = 'bonus';
    $this->additional_fields['win'] = array(
      'table' => 'leaguesite_scores',
      'field' => 'win',
    );
    $this->additional_fields['draw'] = array(
      'table' => 'leaguesite_scores',
      'field' => 'draw',
    );
    $this->additional_fields['loss'] = array(
      'table' => 'leaguesite_scores',
      'field' => 'loss',
    );
   }
  
   function query(){
      $this->ensure_my_table();
       $this->add_additional_fields();
  }
  
  function render($values){
      $played = ($values->leaguesite_standings_won * $values->leaguesite_scores_win) + ($values->leaguesite_standings_lost * $values->leaguesite_scores_loss) + ($values->leaguesite_standings_drawn * $values->leaguesite_scores_draw) + $values->leaguesite_standings_bonus;
      //for some reason, this comes out as blank when a zero is returned. Not a massive problem, however as you can just use the empty text to display a zero
    return $played;
  }
}
?>

Comments

Hey, I got this answered on

Posted by Alun on February 21, 2010 at 8:57pm

Hey, I got this answered on the IRC channel, so no worries about answering it. For those interested, you can't sort by a field that doesn't exist, which kind of makes sense as the sorting takes place in the DB query. Fortunately, because my points are worked out from a number of fields that DO exist, I think I might be able to work something out.
All the best guys!