render

7 common.inc	`render(&$element)`
8 common.inc	`render(&$element)`

Renders an element.

This function renders an element using drupal_render(). The top level element is shown with show() before rendering, so it will always be rendered even if hide() had been previously used on it.

Parameters

$element: The element to be rendered.

Return value

The rendered element.

4 string references to 'render'

File

includes/common.inc, line 5863: Common functions that many Drupal modules will need to reference.

Code

function render(&$element) {
  if (is_array($element)) {
    show($element);
    return drupal_render($element);
  }
  else {
    // Safe-guard for inappropriate use of render() on flat variables: return
    // the variable as-is.
    return $element;
  }
}

Comments

A smarter render function…

Posted by dvessel on February 6, 2011 at 1:27am

I created this for the NineSixty theme but I think this can be very useful to all themers. Takes a simple selector and searches the render array and prints it out.

https://gist.github.com/812873

Now in dvessel's sandbox:

Posted by Sutharsan on May 11, 2011 at 8:57am

Now in dvessel's sandbox: http://drupal.org/sandbox/dvessel/1122312

What is this new render technique?

Posted by joshmiller on April 6, 2011 at 3:06am

Read more here: Render Arrays in Drupal 7 (Documentation)

There seems to be a problem

Posted by djg_tram on September 20, 2011 at 6:15pm

There seems to be a problem with this. Bartik, Garland and other bundled themes blow up on render if it is called from theme('page', $output) where $output is some plain HTML you have to craft yourself (eg. when you have to IFRAME a page into a Drupal site). PHP throws an "Only variables can be passed by reference" fatal error and the execution will not reach inside the function, to the conditional in the first place. A workaround is to create a surrogate form with a single #markup inside but is this working as designed?

render an empty region

Posted by jibran on October 9, 2011 at 6:09pm

I have noticed in D7.8 that if you render an empty region. the region didn't remain empty anymore. render populates the #printed true and #children with an empty array.
I haven't found anything regarding this in any documentation
so

<?php
if(page['sidebar_first'])
print render(page['sidebar_first']);
?>

Form submit handler not being called

Posted by kwesistewart on February 5, 2012 at 10:15pm

You may chose to render form elements individually in your custom theme. In that case you need to remember to add the following elements to your output:

$form['form_build_id'], $form['form_id'] and $form['form_token']

If you do not include them Drupal will ignore the form submission (and your submit handler(s).

more info here.