How to quickly theme a view?

The Devel module's "Theme developer" feature is handy for seeing what template files Drupal is looking for when it goes to theme something. See the screenshot on that page for an example.


In fact there are two ways to theme a view : the "field" way and the "node" way. In "edit View", you can choose "Row style: Node", or "Row style: Fields".

  • with the "Node" way, you can create a node-contentname.tpl.php wich will be called for each node in the view. You'll have access to your cck field values with $field_name[0]['value']
  • with the "Field" way, you add a views-view-field--viewname--field-name-value.tpl.php for each field you want to theme individually.

Thanks to previous responses, I've used the following tools :

  • In the 'Basic Settings' block, the 'Theme: Information' to see all the different templates you can modify.
  • The Devel module's "Theme developer" to quickly find the field variable names.
  • View 2 documentation, especially the "Using Theme" page.

You should also check out Semantic Views. For simple Views theming, it is really handy.


A quick way to find the template files you can create and modify for a view in Views 2.0 is to:

  1. Edit the view
  2. Select the style (e.g. page, block, default)
  3. In the 'Basic Settings' block click on 'Theme: Information' to see all the different templates you can modify.