Drupal Views and CiviCRM on same database not working

Question

I have CiviCRM 4.7.28, Drupal 7.56 and Views 7.x-3.18 and have CiviCRM and Drupal in the same database.

I have read in the documentation that Views should work out of the box, and most of the issues relating to CiviCRM and Views is to configure setup if CiviCRM and Drupal are on different databases.

Any tip much appreciated!

Answer 1

Perhaps you missed this step: https://docs.civicrm.org/sysadmin/en/latest/integration/drupal/views/

1. Before making any changes, it is strongly advised that you make backups of your mysql databases and settings.php file.
2. If you have different database users for your CiviCRM and Drupal databases, then you need to grant SELECT access for the Drupal user to all the CiviCRM tables.
3. Make sure you are logged into your Drupal site as the administrator.
4. Visit http://example.org/civicrm/admin/setting/uf?reset=1
5. You should see a page with output that begins with: $databases['default']['default']['prefix']= array(
6. Copy this setting output, including the trailing );
7. Open /sites/default/settings.php for editing from the root directory of the site, typically public_html on most servers.

   Note: This assumes you have a single site installation. The location of the settings file might be different depending on whether or not you have multiple sites

8. Find the database connector array. This is where Drupal stores the information regarding the MySQL database and the necessary credentials to connect to it. The array beings with $databases = array ( then goes on to include the location and MySQL credentials, as well as additional options.
9. Paste your previously-copied settings output here. Be sure to paste it after the trailing );
10. You may need to indicate the default prefix. If you see an error [like] PDOException: SQLSTATE[42S02]: Base table or view not found: 1146 Table 'kckruppc_every.semaphore' doesn't exist: SELECT ... You need to include an additional line, 'default' => '<drupaltableprefix>', in your settings.php just after $database ['default']['default']['prefix']= array(. …
11. Save the file. You might want to clear your site cache at this point.
12. You should now be able to create views based on CiviCRM data.

Answer 2

As a test you could install the CiviCRM Entity module, that provides views integration in a different way than core. If that doesn't work then something strange is happening for sure

Answer 3

Like KarinG said, there is a step needed to tell Drupal about CiviCRM's database tables. That is described at https://docs.civicrm.org/sysadmin/en/latest/integration/drupal/views/. This involves editing your Drupal settings.php file and pasting code provided by CiviCRM.

This has worked well for me, and I have this working on a live site right now. Some of the queries you can run with this in Views are a bit limited compared to native Drupal node queries, but it does work.