Merge multiple _phptemplate_variables functions

Last updated August 26, 2009. Created by John Morahan on June 16, 2007.
Edited by ronald_istos, bryan kennedy, Senpai. Log in to edit this page.

Many PHPTemplate theme snippets, and some contributed modules, require you to add a _phptemplate_variables function to your theme's template.php file. Unfortunately, if you want to use more than one such module or snippet, or if your theme already contains a _phptemplate_variables function, you can't simply add another one - you have to merge the two functions. If you don't know PHP very well, this may seem like a daunting task.

Here is a simple recipe for merging multiple _phptemplate_variables functions into one. You don't need to know PHP; just copy and paste, and change some names as described below.

1. Put all the necessary _phptemplate_variables functions into your template.php file, and change all their names from _phptemplate_variables to something else. For example, _phptemplate_variables_taxonomy_snippet, _phptemplate_variables_page_title_module etc. If there's already a _phptemplate_variables function in the theme, change its name too - e.g. _phptemplate_variables_garland_theme. Make sure not to give any two functions the same name.
2. Create a new _phptemplate_variables function. This will be the master function that will combine all the variables from the other functions. Here is what it should look like:
   <?php
/**
* Call all our custom _phptemplate_variables_* functions and merge the results into a single array.
*/
function _phptemplate_variables($hook, $vars) {
  $funcs = array(
    // These are the names of our custom functions.  Add more below as needed.
    '_phptemplate_variables_taxonomy_snippet',
    '_phptemplate_variables_page_title_module',
    '_phptemplate_variables_garland_theme',
  );
  foreach ($funcs as $func) {
    $vars = array_merge($vars, $func($hook, $vars));
  }
  return $vars;
}
?>
   Copy the above code into your template.php and change the function names to the ones you actually used.
3. Later, if you want to add yet another _phptemplate_variables function, you can easily do so by giving it a new name, and adding that name to the list.