hook_form_alter() exposed filter form item #weight

Question

I'm trying to insert a form element with hook_form_alter(), and then rearrange the form elements so that the new form item appears at a particular point amongst the existing exposed filters.

I've tried adding #weight of 0 to all existing items and then #weight of -1 to the new element, just to see if I can have any influence on the form item order at all, however I don't seem to be able to affect it.

EDIT: In addition I'm getting kinda weird behaviour regarding the container of the Form element. I'm adding my form element as a new array element at the root of $form, however it is be rendered inside the element <div class="views-exposed-widget views-submit-button"> rather than getting it's own container, which seems like either a bug or I really am doing something wrong!

Answer 1

Take a look at comments #3, #7 and #9 in http://drupal.org/node/893392

#3 (dereine):

The problem is that there is some theming on exposed form. You would have to override it, sadly.

#7 (manatwo):

Yes, all of it is handled in views-exposed-form.tpl.php, which you can override in your theme to print out your fields manually. IIRC, the extra fields are gonna be in the $button variable in that template, so you might want to do some preprocessing in template.php

#9 (PadreHomer):

I was able to alter the order without overriding the template. I am using Views 3, but I think this will work in Views 2 as well.

Alter the order of the filters in $form['#info'] in your form_alter and this should alter the order the widgets print out in the template without having to do any custom templating.

Answer 2

A small update on this (as I have just updated http://drupal.org/node/893392 too), if someone faces similar problem in the future, as I just did myself, trying to place my new exposed form item in-between "widgets" generated automatically by the view - the solution is to turn that new form item into a widget, and then re-order widget array in the $form['#info'].

In my case I was adding new community form item into Views exposed form, and then wanted it to be displayed as a second element in the form, right after filter-title generated by the view:

function mymodule_form_alter(&$form, &$form_state, $form_id) {
  if ($form_id == 'views_exposed_form' && $form['#id'] == 'views-exposed-form-mw-group-list-page-1') {
    // Add new form item.
    $form['community'] = array(
      '#type' => 'radios',
      '#title' => t('Community'),
      '#options' => $options_array,
      '#default_value' => $default_value,
    );
    // Create widget from new form item and place it as a second element.
    $new_form_info = array(
      'filter-title' => $form['#info']['filter-title'],
      'filter-community' => array('value' => 'community'),
    );
    $form['#info'] = array_merge($new_form_info, array_diff_assoc($form['#info'], $new_form_info));
  }
}

Obviously the code responsible for re-ordering $form['#info'] will look different depending on where the new form item should be displayed.