How to add contextual links to the main content block?

Question

The main content block has no contextual links. I believe this is related to _block_get_renderable_array but I'm not really sure. I'm using Custom Contextual Links module to add contextual links to blocks, but of course it doesn't work with system-main (the main content block).

Answer 1

Contextual module (core) will preprocess the block renderable array and turn $block->content['#contextual_links'] into the block template $title_suffix using the contextual_links element type (see contextual_element_info). See contextual_preprocess for the implementation of this behavior.

While block module relies on _block_get_renderable_array for performance reasons, contextual links example module (from the examples package) shows an example of setting #contextual_links on hook_block_view.

As for CCL, it relies on hook_contextual_links_view_alter which will only alter or add links if there is already a #contextual_links element in the renderable array. The main content block doesn't get the default 'Configure block' contextual link (see _block_get_renderable_array), and therefore CCL doesn't affect it by default. Let's just add the default contextual link:

/**
 * Implements hook_block_view_MODULE_DELTA_alter().
 */
function MYMODULE_block_view_system_main_alter(&$data, $block) {
  if (user_access('access contextual links')) {
    $data['content']['#contextual_links']['block'] = array(
      'admin/structure/block/manage',
      array('system', 'main'),
    );
  }
}

Answer 2

This answer is not related to user's question. I wrote this in case others similar like me is looking for adding contextual link in hook_block_view.

Here is the contextual link example module mentioned by Barraponto regarding setting #contextual_links on hook_block_view.

http://api.drupalize.me/api/drupal/function/contextual_links_example_block_view/7 http://api.drupalize.me/api/drupal/function/contextual_links_example_menu/7

Another example will be the original drupal menu module.

// http://api.drupal.org/api/drupal/modules!menu!menu.module/function/menu_block_view/7
function menu_block_view($delta = '') {
  $menus = menu_get_menus(FALSE);
  $data['subject'] = check_plain($menus[$delta]);
  $data['content'] = menu_tree($delta);

  // Add contextual links for this block.
  if (!empty($data['content'])) {
    $data['content']['#contextual_links']['menu'] = array('admin/structure/menu/manage', array($delta));
  }
  return $data;
} 

// The contextual link above needs to work out with hook_menu as example show below.
// http://api.drupal.org/api/drupal/modules!menu!menu.module/function/menu_menu/7
function menu_menu() {
  ...

  $items['admin/structure/menu/manage/%menu'] = array(
    'title' => 'Customize menu', 
    'page callback' => 'drupal_get_form', 
    'page arguments' => array('menu_overview_form', 4), 
    'title callback' => 'menu_overview_title', 
    'title arguments' => array(4), 
    'access arguments' => array('administer menu'), 
    'file' => 'menu.admin.inc',
  );
  $items['admin/structure/menu/manage/%menu/list'] = array(
    'title' => 'List links', 
    'weight' => -10, 
    'type' => MENU_DEFAULT_LOCAL_TASK, 
    'context' => MENU_CONTEXT_PAGE | MENU_CONTEXT_INLINE,
  );

  ...
}

Hope it helps other who facing similar problem like me.