Alter the comment form

Question

I have the following code to alter the way comment form is displayed. After the bellow code everything is displayed as i want to but it does not add the comments.

 global $user;
     if ($user->uid) {
       $form['author']['_author'] = array
     (
        '#tittle' => 'Name',
        '#attributes' => array('id'=>array('name')),
        '#prefix' =>'<ul> <li class="name_field_c"><label for="name">Name</label>'.$form['author']['_author']['#markup'],
        '#suffix' => '</li>'
     );   
     }
     else {
     $form['author']['name'] = array
     (
        '#type' =>'textfield',
        '#attributes' => array('id'=>array('name')),
        '#prefix' =>'<ul> <li class="name_field_c"><label for="name">Name</label>',
        '#suffix' => '</li>'
     );  
     }

     $form['author']['mail'] = array(
        '#type' =>'textfield',
        '#attributes' => array('id'=>array('email')),
        '#prefix' => '<li class="email_field_c"><label for="email">Email (optional)</label>',
        '#suffix' =>'</li>',
        '#required'=>TRUE,
        '#weight' => 2
     );

    $form['comment_body'] = array
     (
        '#type' => 'textarea',
        '#attributes' => array('id'=>array('comment')),
        '#prefix' => '<li class="comment_field_c"><label for="comment">Comment</label>',
        '#suffix' => '</li>',
        '#weight' => 4,
        '#resizable' => FALSE
     );


     $form['author']['homepage']['#access'] = FALSE;
     $form['subject']['#access'] = FALSE;


     $form['captcha']['#prefix'] = '<li><div class="captcha">';
     $form['captcha']['#suffix'] = '</div>';
     $form['actions']['submit'] = array (
        '#prefix' => '<button type="submit">',
        '#suffix' => '</button></li></ul>',
        '#markup' => '<span>' . t('Say your piece') . '</span>'
     );

    $form['#action'] = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];

To submit the form i have to press twice on the submit button ( how can i solve it ? ) and after i submit the form again i get the following errors and i cannot figure it out how to solve them:

Warning: array_values() [function.array-values]: The argument should be an array in _field_filter_items() (line 513 of /home/mcristi/public_html/jhub/modules/field/field.module).
Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in text_field_validate() (line 119 of /home/mcristi/public_html/jhub/modules/field/modules/text/text.module).
Notice: Undefined index: homepage in comment_form_validate() (line 2155 of /home/mcristi/public_html/jhub/modules/comment/comment.module).

This thing causes the problem that the form is not submitted/saved :

 $form['actions']['submit'] = array (
        '#prefix' => '<button type="submit">',
        '#suffix' => '</button></li></ul>',
        '#markup' => '<span>' . t('Say your piece') . '</span>'
     );

    $form['#action'] = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];

Is there any possibility to save the comment on the node page ? ( to not be redirected to /comment/reply/$nid)

Answer 1

You're overwriting the form elements that are already there, some of which are fields and so need to have their array structured very specifically (Why is hook_form_alter so messy in d7? has some background for that).

You can alter existing elements in the form without overwriting the whole thing like so:

$form['comment_body']['#prefix'] = '<li class="comment_field_c"><label for="comment">Comment</label>';
$form['comment_body']['#suffix'] = '</li>',

Answer 2

I don't understand why you did #prefix and #suffix with <button> on $form['actions']['submit'] which have already generated a submit button:

  <input type="submit" id="edit-submit" name="op" value="Save" class="form-submit">

You destroyed the default submit button and replaced with

  <button type="submit"><span>Say your piece</span></button>

This would cause the problem of the comment not saved. You could update #value of the submit button.

   $form['actions']['submit']['#value'] = 'Say your piece';

Redirecting to "comment/reply/$nid" is not a problem since the related node is displayed on that page.