Question

In a module I am developing, I am using the following code.

function mymodule_page_alter(&$page) {
  global $user;

  $page['sidebar_first'] = array(
    '#markup' => 'text for first sidebar'
  );
}

How can I load the HTML template file to the first side bar, and pass few variables to this?
Maybe this will be something like the following code.

$page['sidebar_first'] = array(
  '#template' => path,
  '#variables' => array(),
);

Answer 1

You need to use the “#theme” attribute, such as in the following code.

  $build['dblog_table'] = array(
    '#theme' => 'table',
    '#header' => $header,
    '#rows' => $rows,
    '#attributes' => array('id' => 'admin-dblog'),
    '#empty' => t('No log messages available.'),
  );

#theme tells to Drupal which theme function needs to be called; the other properties, if they are already used for a different purpose, are used as variable names to pass to the theme function, or the template file, if one is used.

In the example, theme_table() will receive the following array.

array(
  'header' => $header,
  'rows' => $rows,
  'attributes' => array('id' => 'admin-dblog'),
  'empty' => t('No log messages available.'),
);

This can be done even with those theme functions that really use a template file.

You define a theme function in your hook_theme(), using the necessary keys used for a theme function that uses a template file, such as in the following code.

function mymodule_theme($existing, $type, $theme, $path) {
  return array(
    'mymodule_sidebar' => array(
      'variables' => array('topics' => NULL, 'parents' => NULL, 'tid' => NULL, 'sortby' => NULL),
      'template' => 'mymodule-display',
    ),
  );
}

The theme function would be then used with something similar to the following code.

$page['sidebar_first'] = array(
  '#theme' => 'mymodule_sidebar',
  '#topics' => array('first topic', 'second topic', 'third topic'),
  '#parents' => array('my topics', 'my friend's topics'),
);

The variables that don’t get an explicit value will get the default one reported in hook_theme(); in this case, the default value for the used variables is NULL.