Question

I need to display a page in drupal that is created by a template and based on a specific record from my table.

I created the module “item” (as an example).

I made the item_menu hook:

  $items['items/%item'] = array(
    'title' => 'Items',
    'page callback' => 'drupal_get_form',
    'page arguments' => array('show_item', 1),
    'access callback' => true,
    'access arguments' => array(),
  );  

I created a load function for the item:

function item_load($itemid)
{
  $sql = 'SELECT * FROM {items} it WHERE it.id = :itemid';

  $result = db_query(
    $sql, 
    array(':itemid' => $itemid), 
    array( 'target' => 'mydatabase' ));

  $item = $result->fetchObject();
  return $item;
}

Now I want to use a template to display the specifics for the item, so I made a item module
a item.tpl.php. and a item_theme hook to register the template:

function item_theme($existing, $type, $theme, $path) 
{
  return array(
    'show_item' => array(
      'template' => 'item',
      'variables' => array(),
    ),
  );
}

The final thing I need to do is pass the item object to the item.tpl.php so I can display the item properties.

But I don’t know how to do this. How can I make the item known within the template??

I hope the question is clear enough. Thanks in advance.

[edit]

I found that arg(1) contains the value of the wildcard from the menu page arguments, should I use arg(1) to look up the item in the database?

Answer 1

You need to declare the names and default values for the vars you want to use in the variables part of your array in hook_theme:

function item_theme($existing, $type, $theme, $path) {
  return array(
    'show_item' => array(
      'template' => 'item',
      'variables' => array('var1' => NULL, 'var2' => NULL, 'etc...'),
    ),
  );
}

Then call the theme function like this:

$item_output = theme('show_item', array('var1' => $a_var, 'var2' => $another_var));

** UPDATE **

To address the load() function being called 4 times you can use static vars to avoid the query being run every time:

function item_load($itemid) {
  $items = &drupal_static(__FUNCTION__, array());

  if (!isset($items[$itemid])) {
    $sql = 'SELECT * FROM {items} it WHERE it.id = :itemid';
    $items[$itemid] = db_query(
      $sql, 
      array(':itemid' => $itemid),
      array('target' => 'mydatabase')
    )->fetchObject();
  }

  return $items[$itemid];
}