Drupal: Accessing all rows in a view as an array

Question

Apologies for the awkward wording in this question; I'm still trying to wrap my head around the beast that is Drupal and haven't quite gotten the vocabulary down yet.

I'm looking to access all rows in a view as an array (so I can apply some array sorting and grouping functions before display) in a display output? The best I can tell, you are able to access individual rows as an array using row-style output, but seemingly not in display output.

Thanks!

Answer 1

1. You have to change the Row style setting: to NODE.
2. Click on Theme Information.
3. Create an file with the name of one you find in the Display output point (I would use the second one eq. views-view--portfolio.tpl.php)
4. And now you can use your own Node Template and access the $node variable.

Answer 2

Ultimately, I had to use node_load on each item and load the results of that into an array. Inefficient, but it worked.