[support] searching for node references

[andy baxter]

Hello,

I am using drupal 7 for a site which will carry local news, events, 
group and venue listings, and reviews. I have been thinking about how to 
make links between different content items on the site. E.g. an event 
should link to its venue and to any groups or artists who are performing 
or organising the event.

What I would like is something like this:

- A listing is a listing of a local group, artist, or venue, classified 
under categories.
- an event has a venue field and a performer / organiser field.
- these fields also have optional in-site links. I.e. if you list an 
event for a local performer, the performer name on the event page should 
link to their page, but if the performer is out of town and not on the 
site, then it should just be shown as plain text. Similarly you should 
be able to see upcoming events by performers or at venues on their page.
- i want it to be as easy as possible to create these links, even though 
there are will eventually be a lot of nodes on the site - too many for a 
multiselect box. Also a multiselect reference field wouldn't work 
because the link needs to be optional. Ideally I would like someone to 
be able to just type in a comma separated list of performers for an 
event, and the back end would generate the links to relevant pages 
automatically if they exist. If the system sometimes misses potential 
links, that's not so important as making the system quick and easy to use.

Does anyone have any ideas about how to do this?

One thought so far is to use something based on references, and look for 
a module or write some code which searches for and creates the links 
automatically. Another way might be to use tags - create a taxonomy 
which has one tag per listing (maybe automatically generated when you 
create a listing), and use a free tagging field to type in the performers.

Ideally I would like to avoid writing too much custom code, but if 
necessary I might be up for this.

Thanks for any help with this,

andy baxter