Repositioning node comments
A strange quirk in Drupal 6 hard-codes comment rendering into the node module. This makes it quite difficult to reposition comments, for instance under a set of tabs in the node template. Attempting this brings you crashing into the most dreaded rampart of Drupal theming; moving something out of it's vertical stack:
comment_render($node) can easily be placed in your node template, but how on earth can the original display be removed? comment_render() is called by node_show(), which contains this nugget:
if (function_exists('comment_render') && $node->comment) {
$output .= comment_render($node, $cid);
}Ouch. (Thankfully, this has been fixed in Drupal 7.)
While it's tempting to fake it with jQuery, or CSS positioning, there is a way to fix this by overriding the page callback for node rendering. Here's a quick module that implements this solution:
/**
* Implementation of hook_menu_alter().
* Override the page callback for nodes, so that we can render nodes
* without comments. comment_render() will be called via the node template.
*/
function comment_unrender_menu_alter(&$items) {
$items['node/%node']['page callback'] = '_comment_unrender_node_page_view';
}
/**
* Generate a page displaying a single node, without its comments.
* @see node_show()
*/
function _comment_unrender_node_show($node, $cid, $message = FALSE) {
if ($message) {
drupal_set_title(t('Revision of %title from %date', array('%title' => $node->title, '%date' => format_date($node->revision_timestamp))));
}
$output = node_view($node, FALSE, TRUE);
// Update the history table, stating that this user viewed this node.
node_tag_new($node->nid);
return $output;
}
/**
* Menu callback; view a single node.
* @see node_page_view()
*/
function _comment_unrender_node_page_view($node, $cid = NULL) {
drupal_set_title(check_plain($node->title));
return _comment_unrender_node_show($node, $cid);
}Comments
Great article.
Have you looked at http://drupal.org/project/talk it places the comments on a separate tab.
Wed, 11/11/2009 - 02:12
Interesting. The talk module uses a different technique: it changes the value of $node->comment via hook_nodeapi(). (BTW I should have clarified, those are jQuery tabs, not Drupal's "local task" menus).
Tue, 11/10/2009 - 22:25