Make block render right after enabling the module

Question

I'm working on a module which renders a small block in a footer region. My goal is to make it work out of the box with default settings. User just needs to enable it with drush, no configuration required.

In Drupal 6 version I stumbled upon a strange problem. Looks like after enabling module it's hook_block isn't called, so block isn't rendered. It can be fixed either by doing drush cc all or going to blocks admin page. All caching is disabled on the test site.

I tried to incorporate drupal_flush_all_caches and drupal_cache_clear into hook_install without success.

Can someone give a hint?

Answer 1

After some trials I found an easy workaround:

function mymodule_enable() {
  _block_rehash();
}

It's function which get called then one visits /admin/build/block. It rescans blocks provided by modules.

Answer 2

You need to implement the hook_install hook in an .install file for your module. You'll write a record to the blocks table to add your specified block to a certain region on a certain theme whenever you enable the module. You'll use the drupal_write_record function to write an array like the following (or you could just use an INSERT query, although deprecated):

$block = array(
  'module' => 'module_name', // your module name
  'delta' => 0, // the delta of your block in hook_block
  'theme' => 'theme_name', // The name of the theme you'll add the block to
  'region' => 'footer', // The system name of the region you'll add it to
  'status' => 1,
);