How can I print messages in a Panel layout template?

Question

Printing the drupal messages in page.tpl.php is easy:

<?php print render($messages); ?>

How can I go about doing a similar thing in my Panel layouts?

Notes:

1. I realise there is 'status messages' pane you can use - I wish to avoid this since admin staff will forget to include it on new pages
2. I definitely wish to do it in the Panel template because there is a section above where the messages should display that is set by the admin staff
3. I have tried simply putting that code into mylayout.tpl.php, it didn't work

Here's an example of what I am trying to do:

Is there something I can do in a pre-process function to get this to work?

EDIT:

Thanks to @Beebee I rediscovered the template_preprocess_LAYOUT function in my layout's .inc file and added

$variables['messages'] = drupal_get_messages();

now both $variables['messages'] and $messages exist when the template is called but they contain an array of messages rather than the usual rendered output in a string.

Answer 1

What do you think about using Panels Everywhere? You could then add a message pane to your Default site template and avoid 1.

Also you can disable Block from now on, because all parts of your site, are now panels.

Answer 2

For anyone else who comes across this requirement, messages weren't printing in the Panel template because they were already being called by the page preprocess function in core.

As per this answer about a similar requirement with nodes, the thing to do is to edit your page preprocess function to include this:

function YOURTHEME_preprocess_page(&$variables) {
  // This disables message-printing on ALL page displays
  $variables['show_messages'] = FALSE;
}

And put this in your preprocess function in your layout.inc file:

function YOURTHEME_preprocess_PANEL_LAYOUT(&$variables) {
  $variables['messages'] = theme('status_messages');
}

Answer 3

I have used Panels sparingly but I've made custom regions in themes and used #prefix and #suffix wrappers in the Form API to rearrange HTML on my sites.

Offhand I think you should look for a API hook similar to hook_preprocess_page or hook_process_page, but for Panels to override when viewing content to insert or re-arrange the render array used for the $content. Since Panels isn't exactly straight Drupal API, I'm kinda venturing out into unknown territory but here's the best research I can provide now.

After abit of googling I recommend looking at:

• https://drupal.stackexchange.com/a/64959/3279
• readup on ctools_render_alter and see this example which overrides a node_view, see this example https://www.drupal.org/node/1233570#comment-4811686

The jist of what I'm trying to help you with is to permanently rearrange the output of a Node page such that you can control where $messages is placed.

At the theme layer you might want to try to set Help (Messages) to a Region within the Panel template -- but if that's not possible, hence my attempt at the above magic.

Answer 4

the best integration I could use was having it placed in my html.tpl.php file.