Drupal: force regions to always render? - drupal

Question

I'd like to always render all regions. Even if they don't contain any blocks.
I render my regions like this (in page.tpl.php):
<?php print render($page['region_name']); ?>
Here's the code I'm using, but this has no effect.
function theme_name_page_alter(&$page) {
$regions = system_region_list($GLOBALS['theme'], REGIONS_ALL);
foreach ($regions as $region => $name) {
if(empty($page[$region])) {
$page[$region] = array();
}
}
}

Answer 1

You can make sure Drupal renders every region with the following code (in a custom module):
function hook_page_alter(&$page) {
foreach($page as $region => $blocks) {
if(is_array($blocks) && in_array($region, array('region_1', 'region_2', 'region_3'))) {
if(count($blocks)==1) {
$page[$region]['phantom_content']['#markup'] = ' ';
}
}
}
}
You will need to replace region_1, region_2, region_3 with the names of your regions that you want to make sure are always rendered.
To explain the code a little, if the count of the blocks array is 1 then it means it is empty as it will always contain the #sorted attribute.

Answer 2

It's not just that you don't have any blocks assigned to that region, but almost certainly because the render array is empty. Keep in mind what the render function does-- it calls drupal_render on any/all elements & children in the render array, which converts them to an html string for output. If there are no renderable elements, it doesn't return any html.
The correct (programmatic) way of rendering these regions would be to define a render array for each region, setting the #markup element to whatever html you want Drupal to output there. This would have to be done in your custom module.
If you need to do this from the gui only, I don't see any way other than defining a phantom block. In which case you should probably re-consider what it is you're trying to accomplish.

Answer 3

I think the answer lies in the region.tpl.php file and associated template_preprocess_region() function.
The template file checks that there is a valid variable called $content available, which is loaded up from the preprocess function. If that $content array is empty, the condition will fail and no markup will be rendered (which will happen if the region contains no blocks).
Try adding a copy of region.tpl.php to your theme, removing the if ($content): condition, and then flushing Drupal's cache.