Contextual filter with Node Reference and Pathauto I work for an organization that makes research grants. We periodically write "research briefs" for our grants to summarize what they found. My test Drupal site has a view of research briefs, and what I'd like is to display a block of grant information as a user is looking at a specific research brief. 

I've got two custom content types: grants and research-briefs. The research-brief content type has a node reference field to grant ID. I use pathauto, so an example research-brief path is: site.org/research-brief/551023442 where 551023442 is the grant ID. 

The way it seems I should set up the block view contextual filter is:
Content: Parent ID (field_parent_id)
When the filter is not available: 
   Provide the default value. 
   Type: Raw value from URL
   Path component: 2
   Use path alias: checked

This doesn't work and I've tried any number of fields and any number of configuration options and would sure appreciate any helpful pointers. If I display all results I can see all grants in the block.
I'd try this with a contextual filter for the research brief content:nid and then use the default value: node id from the url. This works regardless of pathauto and always provides the correct node is for the research brief.

Then add a Views relationship (join) from the Research brief to the Grant. Select the node reference field for this relationship.

Finally select the fields you want to display, using the Grant relationship.