Moving Comments into a Block - Drupal 7

Submitted by Jeff Geerling on January 4, 2012 - 2:04pm

Most of the time, Drupal's convention of printing comments and the comment form inside the node template (node.tpl.php) is desirable, and doesn't cause any headaches.

However, I've had a few cases where I wanted to either put comments and the comment form in another place on the page, and in the most recent case, I asked around to see what people recommended for moving comments out of the normal rendering method. I found a few mentions of using Panels, and also noticed the Commentsblock module that does something like this using Views.

However, I just wanted to grab the normal comment information, and stick it directly into a block, and put that block somewhere else. I didn't want Views' overhead, or to have to re-theme and tweak things in Views, since I already have a firm grasp of comment rendering and form theming with the core comment display.

So, I set out to do something similar to this comment on drupal.org (which was also suggested by Jimajamma on Drupal Answers).

First, I had to hide the comments from the normal rendering pipeline in node.tpl.php, which involved using template_preprocess_node() to set 'comment' to 0, and a check in node.tpl.php to make sure $content['comments'] would only be rendered if $comment evaluated to TRUE:

<?php
function THEMENAME_preprocess_node(&$variables) {
  // For note nodes, disable comments in the node template.
  if ($variables['type'] == 'note') {
    $variables['comment'] = 0;
  }
}
?>

Then, I simply built a block in my custom module, and used the magic of comment_node_page_additions() to render the comments and comment form, just as they would render under the node, except in my own, spiffy comment block:

<?php
/**
* Implements hook_block_info().
*/
function MODULENAME_block_info() {
  $blocks['note_comments'] = array(
    'info' => t('Note Comments'),
    'cache' => DRUPAL_NO_CACHE,
  );
  return $blocks;
}

/**
* Implements hook_block_view().
*/
function MODULENAME_block_view($delta = '') {
  global $user;
  $block = array();
  if ($delta == 'note_comments') {
    // Get the active menu object.
    if ($node = menu_get_object()) {
      // Make sure user is viewing a note.
      if ($node->type == 'note') {
        $block['content'] = '';
        // Set the title of the block.
        $block['subject'] = NULL;
        // Render the comments and comment form (access checks, etc. are done
        // by comment_node_page_additions()).
        $block['content'] .= drupal_render(comment_node_page_additions($node));
      }
    }
  }
  return $block;
}
?>

Then, after a quick trip to the Configure > Blocks page, where I assigned my block to a region, I had a slick comments block that I could render anywhere!

Tags: 
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drupal planet
drupal 7
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Comments

leschekfm's picture

Submitted by leschekfm (not verified) on January 4, 2012 - 6:50pm.

First, I had to hide the comments from the normal rendering pipeline in node.tpl.php, which involved using template_preprocess_node() to set 'comment' to 0, and a check in node.tpl.php to make sure $content['comments'] would only be rendered if $comment evaluated to TRUE:

If you overwrite the values stored in $content['comments'] to 0 you could also just unset it. This way you wouldn't need another check in your node.tpl.php.

Or did I miss something here?

Jeff Geerling's picture

Submitted by Jeff Geerling on January 5, 2012 - 7:22am.

Correct; but I could still do it a bit differently. I just like simple if/endif statements in the template files. I also like sticking to one node.tpl.php with a tiny bit extra logic, rather than three or four template files, if I'm just making a tiny one line tweak.

Check out my personal website: www.lifeisaprayer.com.

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