drupal recipes: building image galleries with jquery and flickr

Drupal Recipes: Building Image Galleries

Presented by Benjamin Shell from WorkHabit

Covering Flickr, jQuery, and Drupal best practices

Start with a plan, and make Drupal work for you.

(don’t limit your imagination to what Drupal and existing modules do out of the box)

Planning

Remember that most* people don’t think like a relational database

*Disclaimer: I recently used database concepts in an unrelated discussion with my wife...

My Plan

• Show random image thumbnails on the sidebar

• Show a sliding image viewer on the right

User Experience:

Technical Requirements:

• Download images from Flickr

• Store images as nodes

• Use Views to build queries

Looking for Modules

• drupal.org

• drupalmodules.com

• CVS checkout of all contributions (grep search for keywords)

• Asking around (drupal.org, IRC, co-workers, conferences, etc.)

Implementation

There are essentially two types of Drupal modules:

1. Reusable “ingredients”

2. Complete solutions

(there’s some overlap of course)

My Approach

Use complete solutions if appropriate, BUT:

• DON’T spend too long finding them

• DON’T spend too long forcing them to work for you

• DON’T load 2000 lines of code if you’re only using 50

My ApproachUse common “ingredients” to build what you need.

Building the site

Input OutputStorage Retrieval

start here

Storage

Preferred: CCK + Imagefield

Not-recommended:

• Attach multiple image files directly to a node

• Use a non-CCK node type

StorageNew content type: Image

Data Input

• Millions of people already use it

• Easy to upload photos

Why import to Drupal?

• Theming flexibility

• Integration

• Security

Flickr Import

Plan:

• Automatically download new photos from Flickr

• Create Drupal nodes with attached images

• Import Flickr tags to taxonomy terms

Problem: I couldn’t find a module to do this

The closest I could find...

• Activity Stream

• FlickrRippr

• Emfield/Emfield Import

• Flickr module

Flickr API ModuleNEW M

ODULE

• Loads phpFlickr

• Stores the Flickr API key

• Can be used by other Flickr modules

Flickr API Module

Flickr Sync ModuleNEW M

ODULE

Downloads new Flickr photos to new Drupal nodes

Flickr Sync ModuleSettings page:

• Configure the content fields to use

• Specify batch importing settings

Flickr Sync Module

Every user has Flickr sync settings in their account settings

Flickr Sync Module

Performing an import manually(cron will keep things up-to-date, but the manual

process is nice for the impatient among us)

Thumbnails with a lightbox

Lightboxes

• Popular replacement for popup windows

• Comparison of “lightbox” type modules:http://www.drupal.org/node/266126

• I used jLightbox for it’s simplicity, but Lightbox 2 is another great module

Lightboxes

Lightboxes typically work using the “rel” attribute of a link:

<a href="images/image-1.jpg" rel="lightbox">image #1</a>

Using the Views UI

Filter for image nodes

Create a block

Lightboxes

function phptemplate_views_view_imagelist($view, $type, $nodes) { foreach ($nodes as $n) { $node = node_load($n->nid); $original_file = $node->field_image[0]['filepath']; $lightbox_file = imagecache_create_url('lightbox', $file); $img_tag = theme('imagecache', 'sidebar', $original_file); $link = l($img_tag, $lightbox_file, array( 'rel' => "lightbox[sidebar]"), NULL, NULL, FALSE, TRUE); $output .= '<div>' . $link . "</div>\n"; } return $output;}

Theming the view

No more hunting for a module to do exactly what you want -- with just a little view theming code the

possibilities are endless!

Building an image slider

Image Slider Module

NEW M

ODULE

Concept based on jQuery slideViewer 1.1

Building a new module can be easier than building a

complex theme

Building the image slider

• Setup a new View (just like before)

• Call the View from your module:$view = views_get_view('imageslider');

• Render the View from your module:$output = views_build_view('block', $view, array(), false);

• Theme the View (just like before)

Theming output

<div class="imageslider" style="width: 500px; height: 300px"> <ul style="width: 1500px"> <li><img src="..." alt="" title="" /></li> <li><img src="..." alt="" title="" /></li> <li><img src="..." alt="" title="" /></li> </ul></div>

Image slider CSSdiv.imageslider { overflow: hidden; position: relative;}

div.imageslider ul { list-style-type: none; position: relative; left: 0; top: 0;}

div.imageslider ul li { float: left;}

Change left value to move

the slider

Image slider JavaScript

• Get the image slider container

• Find out how many images there are

• Get the width of the images

• For each button click, move the slider to the proper position:(current image number) x (width of images)

Add module settings

Easy to add, easy to change

Tips for using CSS and JavaScript with Drupal

CSS and JavaScript

Load only where needed

Adding JavaScript

JavaScript should be unobtrusive

“Auto Attach”

// Global Killswitch

if (Drupal.jsEnabled) {

$(document).ready(Drupal.imageslider.autoAttach);

}

Runs your JavaScript if JavaScript is available and when everything is ready.

Use Drupal.settingsDrupal can output settings that can

be easily read in your JavaScript:

drupal_add_js(array( 'imageslider' => array( 'easeFunc' => variable_get('imageslider_ease_func', ''), 'easeTime' => variable_get('imageslider_ease_time', 750) ) ), 'setting');

In PHP:

In JavaScript:var easeTime = Drupal.settings.imageslider.eastTime;

Adding JavaScript

Follow good naming conventions

Naming Conventions

var box = getBox();

var newBoxHeight = 20;

box.setHeight(newBoxHeight);

Typically lower/upper , but just be consistent with Drupal and jQuery, or whatever JS libraries you work with.

Adding JavaScript

Use proper namespacing

JavaScript Namespacing

What’s wrong with this?

for (i = 0; i < 5; i++) {

// do something

}

JavaScript Namespacing

Using undefined variables clutters the global namespace!

JavaScript Namespacing

Define every variable!

for (var i = 0; i < 5; i++) {

// do something

}

JavaScript Namespacing

Namespace everything. Even JavaScript functions will overwrite each other:

function test() { alert('foo');}

function test() { alert('bar');}

test();

overwritten!

JavaScript Namespacing

var Drupal = Drupal || {};

Drupal.extend = function(obj) { ... }

Drupal.dimensions = function (el) { ... }

An example of proper namespacing:

Adding JavaScript

Learn to understand scope

Understanding Scope

function autoAttach() { var settings = { foo: 'bar' };

jQuery("a").mouseover(function() { alert(settings.foo); });}

Simple Example of jQuery scope:

Understanding Scope

function autoAttach() { var settings = { foo: 'bar' }; jQuery("a").mouseover(function() { onOver.call(settings); });}

function onOver() { // 'this' is the settings object alert(this.foo);}

Using a separate function for handlers

Understanding Scope

function autoAttach() { var settings = { foo: 'bar' }; jQuery("a").mouseover(function(evt) { onOver.call(settings, evt); });}

function onOver(evt) { // 'this' is the settings object alert(this.foo);}

Passing additional variables with ‘call’

Tools

• Firefox with Firebug

• Aptana Studio

• Opera Developer Tools

• IE Developer Toolbar

• Windows (for testing)

New Drupal.org Releases

• http://drupal.org/project/flickrapi

• http://drupal.org/project/flickrsync

• http://drupal.org/project/imageslider