How to add title attribute to link tags generated by view in Drupal?

Question

I've built a view using the views module in Drupal to display a grid of thumbnail images (field_image) that are linked to a full size image for use with Lightbox.

I've got that part working but I also display caption text beneath the thumbnail image. I want to append this caption text to the A tag like: <a href="image/photo.jpg" title="My Image Caption">...</a>

I looked at overriding the views-view-field.tpl.php template but this is no HTML in this template it just prints $output;

I'm assuming that some PHP function somewhere in the views module is generating the actual HTML code for the link but I don't know where and how to override it in my theme.

Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

The $output for views-view-field.tpl.php is generated by default in the views field handler itself. You can set aside the $output variable, and use the template variables mentioned in the comments at the start of the file to build your own output.

I install the devel module, then using dpm($row) (etc) to see what values are available. All fields your View is pulling are available in the template. This includes fields for which you check on the "Exclude" option.

In building your link, I suggest you use the Drupal API functions, that way the link will be properly modified by other Drupal functions.

l(t('Link Title'), url/path, array(
  'attributes' => array(
    'title' => t('My Image Caption'),
  ),
));