Drupal 7 Module Development

Chapter 3
First let's look at the following theme_username function's documentation:
/**
* Format a username.
*
* @param $variables
* An associative array containing:
* - account: The user object to format.
* - name: The user's name, sanitized.
* - extra: Additional text to append to the user's name, sanitized.
* - link_path: The path or URL of the user's profile page, home
* page, or other desired page to link to for more information
* about the user.
* - link_options: An array of options to pass to the l() function's
* $options parameter if linking the user's name to the user's
* page.
* - attributes_array: An array of attributes to pass to the
* drupal_attributes() function if not linking to the user's page.
*/
Quite conveniently, theme_username() has a handy $link_path variable that we
want to alter to achieve our old-school giggles. Assuming that we've used some
other business logic with the user module's hooks to load our GeoCities URL into
the user's account (the "hard" part), replacing the link to the user's profile page can
be accomplished with the following simple preprocess function:
/**
* Implements awesomeness with hook_preprocess_username().
*/
function retro_preprocess_username(&$variables) {
$variables['link_path'] = $variables['account']->geocities_url;
}
That's it! We don't have to override the user module's theme implementation; we just
modify its parameters.
Theme overrides
While module developers usually don't have to worry about whether a theme
overrides a particular theme function or not, it's still important to understand how
this mechanism works.
[ 69 ]