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There are several ways you can theme a view on Drupal, and this tutorial will describe a simple and quick way to accomplish just that. I assume that you’re familiar to working with Views and CCK, so I won’t go in much detail on the process of creating the view and content type.

For this example I’m creating a block simple view that will display a teaser for the 3 latest blog posts.

First thing we’ll have to do is create the actual template file on the themes folder (I’d recommend that you create a folder for all the views, but this is optional). We’ll start by going to the views interface to find out how that file should be named.

On the Views interface select “Theme: information” under “Basic Settings”.

You’ll see a list of the possible files you can use listed from the most general(full page)on top to the most specific on the bottom. We’re going to be selecting one option on the “Row Output”. If you don’t need to be too specific about theming that view, you can use the second option. Copy the file name and create that file on your themes folder.

Back to the view interface again. Select “rescan template files” and the file you created should be highlighted on the interface.

Here is where the real theming begins. We’re going to create the variables we need on the template file. In this case, I’ll be creating $title and $body variables.

Go to your views interface under “fields.” However, the links to the fields you want to use are found at the status bar, on the bottom of the browser. We’re looking for the information on the last section of the link. For the Title field, my link looks like this: http://domainname.com/admin/build/views/nojs/config-item/footer_blog/block_1/field/title so the information we’re looking for is “title”.

Knowing that you can set up or title variable like this: $title = $fields['title']->content; And repeating the process for the body will get you something like this: $body = $fields['body']->content;

Now that you have your variables set, can go ahead and theme your file at will! You’ll find yourself dealing with a very simple and clean template file!

Do you have a different technique to theme your views? Share with us!