Question

I’m trying to override the user profile edit form in Drupal 7, and I keep on getting the following error messages:

Notice: Undefined index: #account in template_preprocess_user_profile() (line 189 of /var/www/menit/modules/user/user.pages.inc).
Notice: Undefined index: #account in rdf_preprocess_user_profile() (line 578 of /var/www/menit/modules/rdf/rdf.module).
Notice: Trying to get property of non-object in user_uri() (line 190 of /var/www/menit/modules/user/user.module).
Notice: Trying to get property of non-object in rdf_preprocess_user_profile() (line 603 of /var/www/menit/modules/rdf/rdf.module).
Notice: Trying to get property of non-object in rdf_preprocess_user_profile() (line 604 of /var/www/menit/modules/rdf/rdf.module).

What I have done is writing a custom module, containing the following code:

function custom_profile_form_user_profile_form_alter(&$form, &$form_state, $form_id) {
  global $user;

  if ($user->uid != 1){
    $form['#theme'] = 'user_profile';
  }
}

function menit_theme($existing, $type, $theme, $path){
  return array(
    'user_profile' => array(
      'render element' => 'form',
      'template' => 'templates/user_profile',
    ),
  );
}

and added the following user_profile.tpl.theme to my theme templates folder:

<div class="profile"<?php print $attributes; ?>>
  <?php print render($user_profile['field_second_name']);  ?>
  <?php print render($user_profile['field_first_name']);?>
  <?php print render($user_profile);?>
</div>

I’m kind of lost now, and I’m running short on time. Does anyone have an idea of what have I done wrong here?

Answer 1

The problem is the following line you are using:

$form['#theme'] = 'user_profile';

That lines changes the theme function associated to the form, and it is causing some preprocess functions to be invoked, such as [template_preprocess_user_profile()][1], and [rdf_preprocess_user_profile()][2]. All those preprocess functions, which are thought to be called for user profile, are looking for some variables that in your case are not defined, such as $variables['elements']['#account'].

You don’t use a template file to render a form. Depending what you want to achieve, you can use different methods:

• If you want to remove some form fields, you implement hook_form_FORM_ID_alter(), which is the hook you have already implemented, and use it to hide some form fields.

  $form[$field_id]['#access'] = FALSE;
  

  In this way, the field will not shown for the user. I suggest using that, as it is the method that causes less problem to other modules than unset($form[$field_id]); if you use this, $form_state['values'] will not contain the values for that field, and some validation, or submission handler could report an error (e.g. “the value for [name of the field] must be entered”).

• If you want to add a CSS class to a form field, you can use:

  $form[$field_id]['#prefix'] = '<div class="mymodule-custom-class">';
  $form[$field_id]['#suffix'] = '</div>';
  

  This is the simpler, and faster way. If you need to wrap more than one form field, then you should use something similar to the following code:

  $form[$field_id1]['#prefix'] = '<div class="mymodule-custom-class">';
  $form[$field_id2]['#suffix'] = '</div>';
  

  In such cases, you normally want to add a CSS style to the form, which is done with code similar to the following one:

  $form['#attached']['css'][] = drupal_get_path('module', 'mymodule') . '/mymodule.css';
  

  You could also move the form fields in a #container form field, as with the following code:

  $form['container_01'] = array(
    '#type' => 'container',
    '#attributes' => array(
      'class' => array('mymodule-custom-class'),
    ),          
  );
  
  $form['container_01'][$field_id] = $form[$field_id];
  
  unset($form[$field_id]);
  

  In this case, the form field will be wrapped with a <div> tag with the CSS class set for the container. The con with this is that the fields are moved from where they were; you need to adjust their weight to make then appear where they were before. If you use this method, you should be sure your module is the last one to change the form, or modules that expect to find $form[$field_id] will have some problems; this doesn’t apply to the form handlers, except when $form[$field_id]['#tree'] is set to TRUE.