Using taxonomy to create a dynamic layout of nodes grouped by taxonomy term

Taxonomy is a great way of categorizing your content, and in this case we'll take it a step further to organize your content and create a dynamic layout. In a recent situation, we created a taxonomy category for a given node type and assigned 4 terms to the category. The node type contained an image field and a description. We wanted to show a view all the node images, but categorized by taxonomy term. I thought the best way to accomplish this was to get a list of all the taxonomy terms, loop through them, pass the term ID as an argument to a view, and output each view's html dynamically. In the following code snippet, I created a module that generates a block [see below]

When creating your view, make sure you add an argument for "Taxonomy: Term ID". In my example, I selected "Use empty text" for the default argument option to prevent taxonomy terms from being shown if they do not have any matching nodes.

<?php
function MYMODULE_block($op='list', $delta=0) {
  $block = array();
  switch ($op) {
    case 'list':
      $block[0]['info'] = t('MYBLOCKTITLE');
      return $block;
      break;
    case 'view':
      $block['subject'] = NULL;
      $block['content'] = NULL;
      $block_content = "";
      
      // define vocab name
      $vocabName = 'MYCATEGORYNAME';

      // define view name
      $viewName = 'MYVIEWNAME';

      // define node type
      $nodeType = 'MYNODETYPE';

      // get vocabularies for this node
      $vocabs = taxonomy_get_vocabularies($nodeType));      
      
      // ensure vocabs exist
      if (count($vocabs)==0 || !$vocabs) return $block;

      // loop through vocabs and look for matching name
      foreach ($vocabs as $k => $v) {
        if ($v->name == $vocabName) {
          $vocabID = $v->vid;
          break;
        }
      }

      // ensure vocabID exists
      if (!$vocabID) return $block;

      // get vocab term tree
      $tree = taxonomy_get_tree($vocabID);

      // loop through tree and collect term IDs
      $termIDs = array();
      foreach ($tree as $k => $v) {
        $termIDs[$v->tid] = $v->name;
      }

      // loop through term IDs and create views html
      foreach ($termIDs as $k => $v) {

        // get view object
        $view = views_get_view($viewName);  

        // ensure result is an object
        if (!is_object($view)) continue;

        // create view html
        $viewHtml = views_build_view('block', $view, array($k), FALSE, $view->nodes_per_block);

        if (strlen($viewHtml)) {
          // show the taxonomy term name in an <h3>
          $block_content .= "<h3>$v</h3>";

          // add the view html to the block
          $block_content .= $viewHtml;
        }

      }

      $block['content'] = $block_content;
      return $block;
      break;
  }
  
}
?>

The result will resemble the following structure...

Taxonomy Term 1
[node] [node] [node]

Taxonomy Term 2
[node] [node] [node]

Taxonomy Term 3
[node] [node] [node]

Using taxonomy to create a dynamic layout of nodes grouped by taxonomy term

Using Calais