Theme forms

Drupal 6
Theming
PHP

Posted on 12 Feb

I've been working on a project in Drupal 6 Commons which involves theming the user page, which is kind've a rats nest of information and options. The client wanted something with much less.

The first thing I wanted to do was remove a bunch of stuff and change the text on labels. This is a Drupal 6 project so I needed to use hook_theme() in template.php so Drupal would use my form hook.

/**
* Implementation of hook_theme.
*/
function mytheme_theme() {
  return array(
    'user_profile_form' => array(
      'arguments' => array('form' => NULL),
    ),
  );
}

The form uses the "value" of user-profile-form which I found using firebug at the bottom of the form. That's what you need to use in hook_theme() and elsewhere.

Now I could use the following form hook to unset much of the excess and change text.

/**
* Theme override for user page
*/
function mytheme_user_profile_form($form) {
    unset($form['account']['mail']['#description']);
    unset($form['account']['name']['#description']);
    unset($form['account']['pass']['#prefix']);
    $form['submit']['#value'] = 't(Save All Changes)';
    $form['account']['pass']['pass1']['#title'] = t('Reset your password');
    $form['account']['pass']['pass2']['#title'] = t('Confirm new password');
 
  //dpm($form); //uncomment to look at contents of form
  return (drupal_render($form));
}

This is a quick way of just removing elements that are already there and working with what's left. If I wanted though I could rebuild the form in a template file.

/**
* Implementation of hook_theme.
*/
function mytheme_theme() {
  return array(
    'user_profile_form' => array(
        'arguments' => array('form' => NULL),
        'path' => drupal_get_path('theme','mytheme') . '/templates',
        'template' => 'user-profile-form',
     ),
  );
}

This implementation of hook_theme() tells Drupal to look for the template file 'user-profile-form.tpl.php' inside /templates in my theme folder. From there I could use a preprocess function to rebuild the form using drupal_render().

function mytheme_preprocess_user_profile_form(&$vars) {
    $vars['name'] = drupal_render($vars['form']['account']['name']);
    $vars['mail'] = drupal_render($vars['form']['account']['mail']);
    $vars['pass'] = drupal_render($vars['form']['account']['pass']);
}

Then inside user-profile-form.tpl.php I could print the following;

     <?php
       print $name;
       print $mail;
       print $pass;
       //print drupal_render($form); uncomment to load rest of form
     ?>

If this were a Drupal 7 project I could use hook_form_alter() inside template.php.

/**
* Implementation of hook_form_FORM_ID_alter().
*/
function hook_form_user_profile_form_alter(&$form, &$form_state, $form_id) {
    //dpm($form);
}

hook_form_alter() in Drupal 6

In Drupal 6 if there are required fields you won't be able to just unset them, you'll need to use hook_form_alter() which needs to be inside a module. You would create a file like so called maybe, "themeforms.info" and put this inside it,

name = themeforms
description = themeforms implements hook_form_alter to theme tha forms
core = 6.x
package = "themeforms"

And a file called, "themeforms.module"

/**
  * Implementation of hook_form_alter() in Drupal 6
  */
 function themeforms_form_alter(&$form, $form_state, $form_id) {
 
    switch ($form_id) {
      case 'user_profile_page':
           unset($form['name']);
           unset($form['message']);
           // $output .= dsm($form);
        break;
 
          $output .= drupal_render($form);
      return $output;
    }
  }