Drupal 7: Exposed filter on a post date

Question

I have couple hundreds of articles on a website. I use a view to show excerpts and links to them on one page and I also have a pager that show 10 articles at the time. I need to add a dropdown with years [...,2008,2009...,2013]. If you select a year in the dropdown, then view should only display articles that were posted in that year. Years in the dropdown should be updated automatically if a new article added in 2013 for example, and thus the first year is the year of the first publication.

Please suggest possible solutions.

Answer 1

I think, you need to set exposed filter to the view list. The configuration should be something like--

Filter criteria: Date (node);

Form element: Select;

Filter granularity: Year;

Date Fields: Post Date; Expose;

Filter type to expose: Single;

Operator: equal to;

Inform me if it works..

Answer 2

Here is a way to do it if you want to use Drupal's built in "Authored on" field for a node. You'll need to create a custom module. This was created in Drupal 7 / Views 3. My module files are in /sites/all/modules/custom/ViewsYearFilter/.

ViewsYearFilter.info

name = Views Year Filter
description = Allow a view to filter by post year.
package = tools
core = 7.x

files[] = ViewsYearFilter.inc
files[] = ViewsYearFilter.views.inc

ViewsYearFilter.module

<?php

/**
 * Implements of hook_views_api().
 */
function ViewsYearFilter_views_api() {
  return array('api' => 3);
}

ViewsYearFilter.views.inc

<?php

/**
 * Implements of hook_views_data().
 */
function ViewsYearFilter_views_data() {
  return array(
    'node' => array(
      'published_year' => array(
        'group' => t('Content'),
        'title' => t('Year'),
        'help' => t('Filter by years.'),
        'filter' => array('handler' => 'ViewsYearFilter'),
      )
    )
  );
}

ViewsYearFilter.inc

<?php

/* Allows filtering of posts by year in a Drupal View. */

class ViewsYearFilter extends views_handler_filter_in_operator {

  /**
   * Override parent get_value_options() function. This function returns an array of all valid years from our post type.
   * @return
   *   Return the stored values in $this->value_options if someone expects it.
   */
  function get_value_options() {

    $query = new EntityFieldQuery();
    $query->entityCondition('entity_type', 'node')
    ->propertyCondition('type', 'blog_post') //post type
    ->propertyCondition('status', '1'); //is published

    $results = $query->execute();

    $object_node_ids = array_keys($results['node']);
    $objects = node_load_multiple($object_node_ids);

    foreach ($objects as $blog_post) {
      $values[date('Y', $blog_post->created)] = date('Y', $blog_post->created);
    }

    $this->value_options = $values;
    return $values; //array of year values
  }

  function query() {
    $this->ensure_my_table(); //not sure why/if this is necessary
    $startDate = mktime(0, 0, 0, 1, 1, intval($this->value[0]));
    $endDate = mktime(0, 0, 0, 1, 1, intval($this->value[0] + 1));
    $this->query->add_where_expression($this->options['group'], "node.created >= " . $startDate . " AND node.created <= " . $endDate); //filtering query
  }

}

Then, in your view config page you can create a new exposed filter:

Sorry, but I can't actually post this image as I don't have enough reputation. There will be a new exposed filter named "Content: Year" you can add to your view after creating and activating your new module.

PS: I based my code off of Shevchuk's answer on this question.