One big topic in Drupal: theme

What is a theme function?

A theme function is a PHP function within Drupal that is prefixedwith theme_. Theme functions display HTML, and which can becustomized by themes.

All functions that produce HTML for display should be themeable.This means that they should be named with the theme_ prefix, andinvoked using theme() rather than being called directly. Thisallows themes to override the display of any Drupal object.


How to use theme function?

Every chunk of output that is themed through the theme() functionis called a theme hook. There are two ways to provide a defaultimplementation. The easier way is to provide a function, and therecommended way is to provide a template and a correspondingpreprocessor function.

A simple hook_theme implementation might look like this:

function forum_theme() {
  return array(
      'forums'=> array(
          'template' => 'forums',
          'variables' => array('forums' =>NULL, 'topics' => NULL, 'parents' =>NULL, 'tid' => NULL, 'sortby' =>NULL, 'forum_per_page' => NULL),
      ),
//...
  );
}


It also tells us that the forums theme function takes 6 variables(or arguments), and they all default to NULL. (All arguments mustbe given defaults as we have no way to assure that atheme('forums', ...) call will provide the proper information. Ifin doubt, make the default NULL). These arguments are translatedinto the named variables for the template. When calling this themehook, an author might write:


  $output = theme('forums', array('forums'=> $forums, 'topics' => $topics,'parents' => $parents, 'tid' => 17,'sortby' => 'ASC', 'forums_per_page'=> 25))