Custom Field Handlers for Views

This is the goal: Extending the  schedulermodule  tobe able to view a countdown until a node is published orunpublished. Countdown meaning "How many time units until the nodeis published or unpublished". This would be the perfect job for theviews module. Scheduler already exposes its publish_on andunpublish_on fields for use with views.

Defining the supported views version in filescheduler.module

<?php
function  scheduler_views_api (){
   $info [ 'api' ]=  2 ;
  return  $info ;
}
?>

Defining the table and fields in filescheduler.views.inc:

<?php
function scheduler_views_data(){
  $tables['scheduler']['table']['group']= t('Scheduler');

  //how is the scheduler table linked to the nodes
  $tables['scheduler']['table']['join']['node']= array(
    'left_field' => 'nid',
    'field' => 'nid',
  );

  //description of the fields (table columns)
  $tables['scheduler']['publish_on']= array(
    'title' => t('Publishon'),
    'help' => t('Date/timeon which the article will be automaticallypublished'),
    'field' =>array(
      'handler' => 'views_handler_field_date',
      'clicksortable' => TRUE,
    ),
    'filter' =>array(
      'handler' => 'views_handler_filter_date',
      'label' => t('Publishon'),
    ),
    'sort' =>array(
      'handler' => 'views_handler_sort_date',
    ),
  );

  $tables['scheduler']['unpublish_on']= array(
    'title' => t('Unpublishon'),
    'help' => t('Date/timeon which the article will be automaticallyunpublished'),
    'field' =>array(
      'handler' => 'views_handler_field_date',
      'clicksortable' => TRUE,
    ),
    'filter' =>array(
      'handler' => 'views_handler_filter_date',
      'label' => t('Unpublishon'),
    ),
    'sort' =>array(
      'handler' => 'views_handler_sort_date',
    ),
  );

  return $tables;
}
?>

Since we just exposed existing DB fields we only needed to definehow the scheduler table is to be joined with the node table. Fordisplaying the values we could rely on a predefined handler fordate values (views_handler_field_date).That is the code that we need to build upon.

What we need now is a custom handler because there is no predefinedhandler for our purpose. At first we need to define the field.Let's start with a simple second count down:

<?php
  $tables['scheduler']['publish_countdown']= array(
    'title' => t('Publishcountdown'),
    'help' => t('Timeuntil the article will be automaticallypublished'),
    'field' =>array(
      'handler' => 'scheduler_handler_field_scheduler_countdown',
      'clicksortable' => FALSE,
      'timestamp_field' => 'publish_on',
    ),
  );
?>