Rendering blocks with Twig Tweak

This subject is rather confusing because too many things in Drupal are referred to as "Blocks". So it is essential to understand what kind of block you are going to render. This guide covers three main cases you may deal when rendering blocks in a Twig template.

1. Block - plugin

Technically speaking block plugin is a PHP class with a special annotation.
See Branding block plugin as an example.

The simplest way to render block plugin is as follows.

{{ drupal_block('plugin_id') }}

Optionally you can pass block label and plugin configuration in the second parameter.

{{ drupal_block('plugin_id', {label: 'Example'|t, some_setting: 'example', setting_array: {value: value}}) }}

By default blocks are rendered using block.html.twig template. This can be turned off by setting wrapper parameter to false.

{{ drupal_block('plugin_id', {wrapper: false}) }}

The tricky thing here is figuring out block plugin ID. If you know which module provides particular plugin, you can find its PHP class under the MODULE_NAME/src/Plugin/Block directory and locate the ID in the class annotation. For instance the plugin ID of login block can be found in the following file: core/modules/user/src/Plugin/Block/UserLoginBlock.php. When using the plugin ID, convert its format to snake_case (meaning the words are lowercase and separated by underscores e.g. system_branding_block).

To look up all core block plugins use grep search.

grep -r ' id = ' core/modules/*/src/Plugin/Block/;

However this does not work for block types that are defined dynamically using Plugin derivatives (like Views blocks).

The best way to get all registered plugin IDs is fetching them with block plugin manager

drush ev "print_r(array_keys(\Drupal::service('plugin.manager.block')->getDefinitions()));"

Note that the plugin_id needs to be wrapped in quotes. For example,

{{ drupal_block('system_breadcrumb_block') }}

2. Block - configuration entity

This is what we configure on admin/structure/block page. It's important to know that eventually these entities are rendered using block plugins described above. The purpose of the configuration entities is to store plugin IDs and configuration. Additionally they reference theme and region where a block should be printed, but this data are not used when rendering through Twig Tweak.

So having configured a block through administrative interface you can print it using the following code.

{{ drupal_entity('block', 'block_id') }}

Disabled blocks won't be printed unless you suppress access control as follows.

{{ drupal_entity('block', 'block_id', check_access=false) }}

Note that block_id here has nothing to do with block_plugin_id we discussed before. It is an ID (machine_name) of block configuration entity. You may copy it from the block configuration form.

The following Drush command will list all available block entities.

drush ev 'print_r(\Drupal::configFactory()->listAll("block.block."));'

3. Block - content entity

Content blocks, also known as custom blocks are configured on admin/structure/block/block-content page. Actually they have little to do with Drupal block system. These blocks are just content entities like node, user, comment and so on. Their provider (block_content module) also offers a plugin to display them in blocks.

The primary way to display content blocks is like follows.

{{ drupal_entity('block_content', 'content_block_id') }}

Though it looks similar to rendering configuration entities (Section 2), you should note two important distinctions.

• Entity type is 'block_content' not 'block'.
• Content block ID stands for an ID of respective content entity. This is a numeric value that can be found in URL when editing custom block.

Getting content block IDs is as simple as executing a single SQL query.

drush sqlq 'SELECT id, info FROM block_content_field_data'

Since this method does not use block template (block.html.twig) you may need to supply block subject and wrappers manually.

<div class="block">
  <h2>{{ 'Example'|t }}</h2>
  {{ drupal_entity('block_content', content_block_id) }}
</div> 

Another way to accomplish this task is using block plugin (see Section 1).

{{ drupal_block('block_content:<uuid>', {label: 'Example'|t}) }}

Note that plugin ID in this case consists of entity type and entity UUID separated by colon.

It is also possible to create a configuration entity for this content block and print it as described in Section 2.