[dsdemo] Display Suite demo

This page demonstrates creating a dynamic layout for a chosen node content type with Display Suite.
No explicit PHP coding was used in theme templates. (Not that we are scared of them of course, but Display Suite certainly makes it a lot easier, and now covers so many cases that one does well to give Display Suite a go these days before turning to templates.)

The body has been assigned to the header of a 2-column stacked Display Suite layout. The image is assigned to the left and the caption to the right below the header.

Although it looks a bit strange, for the sake of demonstration some fields (including node metadata fields) are inserted into the footer of this layout, below the image and caption.

After the other pre-existing fields in the footer are shown, a Display Suite code field is shown with dynamically generated content, including extracting the entity type of this from the $entity var in PHP.

Finally, to demonstrate a Display Suite dynamic field, the existing node Display Suite is chosen (using almost exactly the same process as used for existing content in Panels) and displayed as a teaser at the bottom of the layout footer.

You can also see a custom Display Suite view mode (not exactly teaser-like) used in a view here.

The picture shows the Alaskan aurora borealis. This caption text field will be displayed right of the image thanks to the assignment to the left (image) and right (caption) respectively in a 2-column stacked layout using the Display Suite. In the teaser view, a smaller image preview is shown.

Click on the image to view it full size in a Lightbox2 viewer

Title: 
Display Suite demo
Author: 
webel
Submitted by: 
Submitted by webel on Monday, March 31, 2014 - 18:02.
Last modified: 
Monday, March 31, 2014 - 21:33

This demonstrates a Display Suite custom code field. This part is just text. But we can use PHP too:

  • Example: The entity type of this is: dsdemo.
  • Example: The date is: Sat, 31 Oct 2020 02:31:52

And we can also optionally use tokens:

  • The site name: Webel IT Australia's Drupal7 demo
  • The site slogan: A tutorial site with custom module examples and an object-oriented bridge for Drupal7 core. With graphical UML models !
IMPORTANT: To use this feature fully one must enable the Display Suite Format module !

[module] Display Suite

5

Only the Drupal7 7.x-2.x branch is assessed here.

The gist of the Display Suite (DS) is that you can change the layout (across all instances) of a chosen node content type or other entity type (like user, comment, taxonomy term, vocabulary) without having to use PHP theme template overrides.

For a demo please visit: Display Suite demo

There is some overlap with Panels, but in typical basic usage the major differences are that: