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Custom Emedded Node Reviews

In this video tutorial, we walk through a custom Node Review module (shared on this site) which embeds reviews in the node content so users do not have to go to a new page to submit a review. It is similar to the Node Review module but that module requires users to leave the node they are reviewing to submit their own review. This module is perfect for Ubercart product reviews to help upsell products. The tutorial is only 9 minutes long and if you don't care how the module works, just download it and start using it -- it is based on Drupal 6.

I've committed a patch to the Nodereview module on drupal.org to include the ability to embed node reviews using Fivestar. You can get it here.

Files: 
custom_nodereview_module.zip
Module Development
Node Review
Fivestar
Voting API

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Comments

Submitted by Matt (not verified) on

Your module is amazing!

I want to say thank you first of all...I can't believe this isn't more popular (it was so hard to find!)

I had one question:

On my site I use Vote Up / Down to allow users to rate the 'reviews' after they have been posted so I was wondering how i could make each review it's own node (or comment ideally) instead of just adding it to the current node.

Any help in the right direction would be great! Thanks again for this!!!

Submitted by yaworsk on

Hey Matt,
thanks for the feedback! I should be doing more to promote the module / tutorial but just haven't had time. It's actually based on the Node Review module.

With regards to your question, I haven't used Vote up/down in a couple months but the need to treat each review as a node or comment is so that vote up / down can find it and change the weighting right? It's a good question, one I hadn't considered. I'll try and take a look at the code for both modules but it might also be good to take a look at the Node Review module and post the feature request there - it makes a lot of sense to be able to vote up and down reviews.

Thanks,

Pete

Submitted by Matt (not verified) on

Hey Pete,
Thanks for the quick response!! Yes I needed the reviews to be comments/nodes so the vote up/down can change the weight. vote up/down integrates automatically through views with comments so that was my goal.

I actually got it to work for now. Not sure if it's the best way though.

In your module where it deletes and adds the review to the database I just added another query to delete / create a comment with the same data!

Then just hid the general output that was there before.

So far so good! Thanks again!!!

Submitted by yaworsk on

Interesting solution. I'd be interested to see it in action if it's live. If you do post the link, make sure to do so with a keyword for some SEO points.

All the best,
Pete

Submitted by Matt (not verified) on

Hey Pete! Been a couple months since i started using your module and everything's working out perfectly for me! I just wanted to drop by and share the link with you so you could see it in action...
productioncritic.com

it's one of the biggest projects i've been on and is suppose to be los angeles' first review site for the film industry! we'll see how it goes :)

Feel free to get back to me with any questions or comments...or if you want my customized version of your module i'd be more than happy to send it your way.

Submitted by RKS (not verified) on

I will second that I've been searching for a number of days for this and just through my searching I've found numerous unanswered postings dating back several years. People want this functionality and so far there is nothing really providing it, especially for users who aren't programmers and really need things to work out of the box. The various Fivestar+nodecomments or Fivestar+[MODULE] aren't maintained to any acceptable degree and the issues mostly end with no solutions listed or closed because the poster didn't bump it everyday for a month and it was automatically closed. Even the documentation you mentioned for Fivestar has numerous problems with no solutions and no one can decide what they really want Fivestars to do and for what version. (They still keep referencing D5 mostly.)

What's frustrating is that for someone like myself looking for a simple review, one axel, five stars, and a displayed average is so hard to come by. I truly can't believe it isn't core UC especially since there are so many feature requests for it. I think you would do well just posting your webcast over there in a few forums since some are still pretty active (though started years ago.)

I'd like to try your module but I'd like to ask how you call the form in the tpl? I copied your tpl section from your module into my node-product.tpl but it just displays "Reviews" and no form after. Maybe I missed it in the video so I apologize if you went over that. I made sure to select the product type in custom node review settings but there's nothing even for the Uberuser. Sorry for the long comment/rant. Cheers.

Submitted by yaworsk on

Hey RKS,
I definitely feel your pain about the lack of embedded node reviews with fivestar.  I've actually been working on the nodereview module over on drupal.org to add this functionality out of the box - you can check it out here, http://drupal.org/node/1141788 -- unfortunately, at this point you have to apply the patch in this comment to get the module to work with embedded reviews. However I'll be committing that change shortly.

As for the question about calling the form in the tpl -- I'm not 100% clear on what you mean. The module adds the review form to your specific node via the hook_nodeapi. Using the theme system, I created a theme function which tells the module to use the nodereview.tpl.php file to theme the output.  You can't past in the section from my tpl file into your node-product.tpl.php becuase none of the review variables will be passed in. As a result, you'll just get "Reviews" like you're experiencing.

Feel free to reply back here if you have any difficulties.

Pete

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