Programatic Block Creation in Drupal

To remove static blocks and replace with as custom block.

Implement hook_block specifying the default visibility and so on

<?php
$blocks['random'] = array(
      'info' => t('Random'),
      'weight' => 0,
      'status' => 1,
      'region' => 'sidebar',
      'pages'  => 'offers',
      'visibility' => 0, // all pages except
      'cache' => BLOCK_CACHE_PER_PAGE,
    );
?>

Create an update hook that deletes the old blocks and boxes (I've specified the ID as I know they won't change on my site).

<?php
function mymodule_update_6101(){
    
    $items = array();
    $items[] = update_sql('DELETE FROM {boxes} WHERE bid in (2, 12,13)');
    $items[] = update_sql("DELETE FROM {blocks} WHERE module = 'block' AND delta in (2, 12, 13)");

// Update the 'blocks' DB table with the blocks currently exported by modules.
// It's a "private" function called when you visit 
// the admin/build/block/list/ page
// calling it here causes the rehash which you otherwise have to visit the page to get
    _block_rehash();

// clear the cache
    cache_clear_all();
    return $items;
}
?>

When you run update.php your shiny new blocks should then be immediately available with no manual steps required.

This makes it so much easier to test your upgrades.

Written on 3rd of February 2010

Comments

_block_rehash()

Submitted by sean on Thu, 02/04/2010 - 08:03.

There's an issue here

http://drupal.org/node/148531

Which discusses problems (and solutions) with using this function for contributed modules.

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