In this blog entry I'll show how you can create a Google map showing where your users are located using CCK, Content Profile, Views, GMap, and Location modules. Once you've downloaded and extracted those modules, enable the following modules (and set permissions accordingly):

Next you'll need to configure these new modules. On the GMap settings page (admin/settings/gmap) you'll need to add your API Key and enable the setting to Use AutoZoom. On the Location settings page (admin/settings/location) enable the checkbox to use a Google Map to set latitude and longitude and enable JIT geocoding. On the geocoding settings page (admin/settings/location/geocoding), you'll have to enable Google Maps for the desired countries.

The Content Profile module creates a new content type called "Profile". You'll need to add a new field to this content type for the user's location (admin/content/node-type/profile/fields). Enter a label for the node type (Location), enter a field name (field_location), choose "Location" for the field type, and choose "Location Field" for the widget.

On the next screen edit the Locative information sections (Collection and Display) to your liking, and save the field settings. For my example, I enabled Street location, Additional, City, State, Postal code, Country, and Coordinate Chooser.

Now if you create your profile node (node/add/profile) you can enter your location information and save the new node. If all is working at this point, if you return to the profile node edit screen and scroll down to the location information, you should now see a marker on map for your location and the geocoded information will be shown.

Now you can add a new view (admin/build/views/add) to show the user's profile locations. Enter a name for your view, choose node for the view type, and click the next button. Add a new filter for "Node: Published" is true and "Node: Type" is one of "Profile". Add a new relationship for Content: Location (field_location). Add fields for "Location: Latitude" (using the Location relationship), "Location: Longitude" (using the Location relationship), and any additional fields you'd like to display in the GMap marker (title, parts of the address, etc). For the Style of the view choose "GMap". For the GMap style settings, select "Choose latitude and longitude fields" for the Data Source and ensure the Latitude and Longitude fields as set.

Lastly, I added a page view so I could see the results in action..

ps> special thanks to everyone at CommonPlaces for their great technical discussions about these modules!

Last year I wrote a quick code snippet to Prevent the user from creating more than one node of a certain type for Drupal 5. I received a comment request to update this code for Drupal 6.

The above code tests if the user is on the node/add/NODETYPE page and if the user has already created an instance of the node type, sets a message and redirects them away from the node/add page.

This article will show you how to establish parent and child relationships between nodes. To start, you'll need to install and enable the CCK module, and node reference (which comes with CCK). Next, you'll need to create two node types (admin/content/types/add). For my example, I created two node types: Organization (parent) and Department (child), both consisting of a title and body (of course, you can add as many fields as you'd like).

Next, you'll want to add a new field to the parent node (organization) by editing the content type (admin/content/node-type/organization) and clicking on the "Manage fields" tab. Enter the information to add a new reference field on this screen. Add a label (ex: "Department Reference"), enter a field name (ex: field_ref_department), choose "Node reference" as the field type, and choose "Autocomplete text field" as the form element as shown below.

On the next screen you can choose the field options. For this example, I changed "Number of values" to "Unlimited" (to allow a one to many relationship), selected "Department" in the list of content types that can be referenced, and saved these settings.

Now, if you create a new parent node (Organization: node/add/organization), you'll have the option of adding pre-existing child (Department) nodes. As you start typing the title of the child nodes in the node reference auto-complete field, it will automatically populate the field with nodes that match. Of course this will only work if you have already created child nodes. At this point adding relationships is a two step process.

To improve usability, you can install the Popups API (http://drupal.org/project/popups) and Add and Reference (http://drupal.org/project/popups_reference) modules which allow you to add child nodes without leaving the node/add/PARENT-NODE screen. After installing and configuring these modules, you'll be able to add child nodes directly from the node/add/PARENT-NODE screen by clicking on the "Add new: Add Child Node link", which spawns a lightbox window to add a child node.

Here is a screenshot of a parent node view after adding child relationships:

In this tutorial I'll show you how you can add jQuery image carousel functionality to your CCK node. This tutorial requires you to install the following modules:

NOTE: The next few steps assume you have not already setup a content type and ImageCache preset. You can ignore them if you already have.

Once you installed the above modules and set permission accordingly, you'll need to define an ImageCache preset (/admin/build/imagecache/add). I called mine "thumbnail" for this example. I added a "Add Scale" action to set the width to 100 (pixels). This will ensure when you create an image, a thumbnail will be created automatically.

Create a new content type (/admin/content/types/add). I called mine "Carousel" for this example. I then clicked on "Manage Fields" (/admin/content/node-type/carousel/fields) to setup a new Image field. I called my new field "field_images", selected "File" for field type, and selected "Image" for the form element.

On the next screen, scroll down to the Global fieldset region and enable the "Required" checkbox, and set the "Number of Values" to "Unlimited". This will allow the user to upload numerous image files to the same CCK field.

Next, you'll want to set which image preset it shown when viewing the node, by clicking on "Display fields" (/admin/content/node-type/carousel/display). I chose the "thumbnail image" preset for both the teaser and full node displays.

I then created a new carousel node (/node/add/carousel). I used the "Add another item" button to upload three images to this node.

If you view the node, the images will be stacked vertically.

This is where the fun starts. You'll need to download the jQuery Carousel library (http://sorgalla.com/projects/jcarousel/). I downloaded the jcarousel.zip file and unpacked it. Copy the entire unpacked jcarousel folder into your theme directory.

Now, you'll need to add a preprocess_node function to your template.php file:

The previous code snippet should result in the following:

If you'd like you can hide the old image html by adding a single line of CSS (or by adding more elaborate code in your template preprocess function).

Example:

Adding the previous CSS will result in this example:

In this tutorial I'll show how I integrated Open Flash Charts into a Drupal view to create a fancy flash based chart from CCK node data.

Let's start by creating a new CCK node type to contain the data. I called mine "graph_data".

I added an integer field called "field_data".

I created a bunch of nodes, populating them with a random integer from 0 to 100.

I added a view called "Graph" to show all of my data. I filtered by node type and published, added sort criteria, chose "Unformatted" for Style, chose how many items to show (100), and added a page view.

At this point, you'll need to download and incorporate the Open Flash Charts library. You can download the library here or by visiting their website and clicking on Downloads in the top right. Uncompress the download and copy the entire directory (version-2-ichor) into your theme directory.

Sample directory structure:

I created a new file in my theme directory called "views-view-unformatted--Graph.tpl.php" (see: Theme Information section on the View edit page) to override it's output. I put the guts of my code in this file:

Here's a screenshot of my new flash integrated view