Add HTMl to CCK within Drupal - drupal

Question

Hello im a newbie at using Drupal, and have come across a block in my progress. I have been using CCK to add new content types to my forms. I was wondering if there was any way to add to the form that is generated so that i may contain the elements and also insert visual html code like head rules etc. I have dabbled with the hook_form_alter() and it does not seem to help me in my efforts. Ive been through adjusting tpl.php files and such and have made no progress. Please if there is any one there in the inter-webs who is knowledgeable on this matter your advice would be greatly appreciated.
Here is just an example of what I would want to do within the form:
1. Contain field elements within DIV's
2. Add HTML Content into the form

Answer 1

If you want to customize the markup for a for you can create a theme function for it and make the form use it with hook_form_alter. This has nothing to do with CCK which is used to customize a content type so you can add additional content to a content type.

Answer 2

hook_form_alter does not help you in altering an edit form containing cck fields because cck fields are added after hook_form_alter call.
You need to theme your form like this:
Create a module and put this hook implementation in it:
function mymodule_theme($existing, $type, $theme, $path) {
'your_form_id' => array(
'arguments' => array('form' => NULL),
'template' => 'my_template',
)
}
Then create a file named my_template.tpl.php in your module directory.
Now empty your cache.
In that file, you can render form elements separately, like this:
<?php
print drupal_render($form['a_form_element']);
print '<h2>blah blah blah...</h2>';
print drupal_render($form['another_form_element']);
// this one is for rendering all the remaining items, like hiddens:
print drupal_render($form);
Use devel module during development. It contains many useful tools that makes development much easier.

Answer 3

Raw HTML CCK Field (Drupal 6) - no filters, formats or editor
Simple Fix! Just use plain text format for unfiltered HTML. Then convert it back to html in a field .tpl when the node is built.
Plain Text format on a CCK field will convert the HTML tags to entity special characters (this would make is so it reads like code on the page instead of being actual html tags). It stores the string encoded using php's htmlspecialchars($text, ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8') inside of drupal's check_plain() function.
The cleanest simplest way to decode it, is in a field tpl file. This avoids hooks, hook order problems, looping bugs, and performance issues. This is done by adding tpl files to the base themes: hq_base, odyssey_base and odyssey_admin. Here is how drupal decodes plain text on a cck node edit form: print html_entity_decode(strip_tags($text), ENT_QUOTES); Note - html_entity_decode turns php tags into html comments when it decodes back to html. Here are sample files with the correct naming convention to give php control over the fields:
• content-field.tpl.php
• content-field-[your_field_name].tpl.php
content-field.tpl.php is a copy from the cck contrib into the theme folders, this is a contrib override to make it available in the theme, and should not be modified (unless you wanted to change all the fields in the theme). The field specific file is also a copy of the tpl, it will work once the override file is there. Then decode to html in the field tpl file:
• // print $item['view'];
• print html_entity_decode(strip_tags($item['view']), ENT_QUOTES);
Drupal Version Note:
The tpl files are slightly different in Drupal 7 and Drupal 8. But the html_entity_decode() is a php function that won't change per Drupal version.
Security Note:
This decode trick for getting raw HTML goes against the way Drupal was built for text formatting security. It means that anyone with permissions to edit the page now has permissions to edit html structure, and add script tags on the page. This can break layouts, and potentially be dangerous. You are relying on editing permissions for security here, instead of Drupal's normal Formats-per-Role security.