Properly render a field

Drupal offers a few (sometimes complicated...) solutions to output a field. Lets take an example with a date field.
To display the full rendered field: field_view_field()

  1. $mydate = field_view_field('node', $node, 'field_mydate');
  2. print render($mydate);
  3.  
  4. /*display
  5. <div class="field field-name-field-mydate field-type-date field-label-above">
  6.   <div class="field-label">Date:</div>
  7.   <div class="field-items">
  8.     <div class="field-item even">
  9.       <span class="date-display-single">Wednesday, 10 October, 2012</span>
  10.     </div>
  11.   </div>
  12. </div>
  13. */

note: default wrappers will be displayed (even if you choose to not display the label in the display settings for instance...)
to choose a different formatter than the default one

  1. $mydate = field_view_field('node', $node, 'field_mydate', array('type'=>'my_custom_one');

To display the raw value of the field: field_get_items()

  1. $mydate = field_get_items('node', $node, 'field_mydate');
  2. print $mydate[0]['value'];
  3. //display 2012-10-10T00:00:00

will display the value as it exists on the db. Can be useful for strings.

To display the formatted value, without any < div >: field_view_value()

  1. $mydate = field_get_items('node', $node, 'field_mydate');
  2. $output = field_view_value('node', $node, 'field_mydate' , $mydate[0]);
  3. print $output['#markup']; //for files use render($output);
  4. //display <span class="date-display-single">Wednesday, 10 October, 2012</span>

will display the formatted value, with only a surrounding span.
note: you can specify a formatter to display an image with a preset

  1. $output = field_view_value('node', $node, 'field_myimage', $myimage[0], array(
  2.   'type' => 'image',
  3.   'settings' => array(
  4.     'image_style' => 'thumbnail',
  5.     'image_link' => 'content',
  6.   ),
  7. ));

not so easy !!

Static variable usage

there is a drupal wrapper for static variables: drupal_static()

Simple modal output with Ctools

Modal window provided by Ctools was designed to output forms but it can serve simple html as well.

Connect to an external db

Sometimes it is useful to use another database than the one installed by default by Drupal.

usefull image functions

how to get an image path or theme a preset image ?

override a default .tpl.php file in theme

To override a default .tpl.php file (to NOT use the page.tpl.php file for instance but page--mysnippet.tpl.php)

Programmaticaly insert block

to output a block created by a module in code, use:

View hooks order

The execution order of view hooks is important if you don't want your tweaks to be overridden

Drupal module list: lesser known

Huge list. I'm sure these Drupal modules will help in the future... if they are not currently used yet!! Always rely on (good...) modules built by the Drupal community than write your own!

Send an email

There is unfortunately no easy way to send an email in Drupal... and no way to send an html email using core functions!!

Firebug console error prevention

If you need to publish code that contains "console" calls (for instance console.log with firebug) and don't want javascript to be broken on browser that don't have console enabled, this function is useful:

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