drupal_render | Eric London's Blog

Revise the structure, layout, and visibility of your node fields

Submitted by Eric.London on 11/4/2008

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When creating your theme, you may need absolute control over your node fields, and creating a node specific template file (CONTENTTYPE.tpl.php) does not give you enough flexibility. This code snippet defines a preprocess_node hook to modify the $content variable, so the field html has already been modified before it reaches your theme.

<?php
function MYMODULE_preprocess_node(&$variables) {
  // test for your node type that you'd like to modify
  if ($variables['type']=='MYNODETYPE') {
    // prepare your node object so the fields can be rendered individually
    $newNode = node_build_content(node_load($variables['nid']));

    // define a variable to hold your rendered content
    $newContent = "";

    // example: define a list of fields to show in an item list
    $itemListFields = array('field_itemlist_1','field_itemlist_2','field_itemlist_3');
    $itemListFieldsData = array();

    // loop through the node content
    foreach ($newNode->content as $k => $v) {
      // example: to prevent a field from being shown,
      // simply render the field and don't capture the output
      if ($k == 'MYFIELDTOHIDE') {
        drupal_render($v);
      } elseif (in_array($k, $itemListFields)) {
        // example: group some fields in an item list
        $itemListFieldsData[] = drupal_render($v);
      } elseif ($k == 'MYOTHERFIELD') {
        // example: surround a field in a div
        $newContent .= "<div id='MYHTMLID'>" . drupal_render($v) . "</div>";
      } else {
        // render the remaining fields and capture the output
        $newContent .= drupal_render($v);
      }

    }

    // example: generate the output for the item list
    if (count($itemListFieldsData)) $newContent .= theme('item_list', $itemListFieldsData);

    // replace the content variable
    if (strlen($newContent)) $variables['content'] = $newContent;

  }

}
?>

Creating a custom theme layout for a CCK node form

Submitted by Eric.London on 10/9/2008

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3 comments

Sometimes the default theming layout of a CCK node cannot simply be adjusted using CSS. In this example, I'll explain how to modify the layout of a CCK node form and group some form elements into a table, item list, etc. NOTE: this code has to reside in you template.php file.

<?php
// first, modify the theme registry so Drupal knows you'd like to override the theming of your CCK node type
function MYTHEME_theme($existing, $type, $theme, $path) {
  return array(
    'MYCCKTYPE_node_form' => array(
      'arguments' => array(
        'form' => NULL
      )
    )
  );
}

// now, define the function that will modify the structure of the form object
function MYTHEME_MYCCKTYPE_node_form($form) {

  // create a variable to store the form html
  $html = "";

  // loop through the $form object
  $fields = array();
  foreach ($form as $k => $v) {
    // check if the current key is a field
    if (substr($k, 0, 6)=='field_') {
      // NOTE: you can use the drupal_render() function to generate the output on $v
      // in this example, I'll create the html for each field and store it in an array
      $fields[$k] = drupal_render($v);

      // NOTE: since we're executing drupal_render on $v, and not directly on $form, 
      // we'll have to remove this field from $form so it will not be rendered twice
      // Normally, drupal will not render a form object if it has already been rendered
      unset($form[$k]);

    }
  }

  // Now the html has been stored in the associative array $fields variable in the format:
  // [field name] => [field html]
  // At this point you could use a theme function
  // (theme_table, theme_item_list, theme_fieldset, etc)
  // to generate the html for a common layout format,
  // or you could create your own html/css layout
  // For example, you could put the fields in an item list:
  $html .= theme('item_list', array_values($fields));

  // Lastly, you'll need to generate the html for the rest of the form fields
  $html .= drupal_render($form);

  return $html;
}
?>

Here's a screen shot of a CCK node form that I rebuilt in a table:

Generate HTML for an individual CCK field

Submitted by Eric.London on 9/26/2008

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This problem comes up a lot in my Drupal module development: How do I generate the html for an individual CCK field? After much examination of the CCK, Views, and Node modules, I came up with this code snippet:

<?php
// load the node object
$node = node_load(MYNODEID);

// at this point the node object contains preprocessed data. build the content
$node = node_build_content($node);

// loop through content
foreach ($node->content as $k => $v) {
  // specify a delimiter
  $delimiter = "\n";

  // ensure field items exist
  if (is_array($v['field']['items'])) {
    // create a container for the items html
    $content = array();

    // loop through items
    foreach($v['field']['items'] as $i) {
      // theme item
      $content[] = theme($i['#theme'], $i);
    }

    // roll up items html using delimiter
    $content = implode($delimiter, $content);
  } else {
    // NOTE: drupal_render includes divs, field labels, etc, which you may not want
    $content = drupal_render($k);
  }

  // NOTE: at this point, the data will be stored in $content, and you can now do whatever you want with it.
  // The date module gave me some headaches with this code snippet, BTW

}
?>