What do I add to template.php so I can render regions in a page created in hook_menu()?

Question

I need to recreate a lot of pages after removing Panels from a site.

In order to print regions in node tpls, I added this to theme_preprocess_node. That's fine but it doesn't work for custom pages.

// Get a list of all the regions for this theme
  foreach (system_region_list($GLOBALS['theme']) as $region_key => $region_name) {

    // Get the content for each region and add it to the $region variable
    if ($blocks = block_get_blocks_by_region($region_key)) {
      $variables['region'][$region_key] = $blocks;
    }
    else {
      $variables['region'][$region_key] = array();
    }
  }

I tried adding that to theme_preprocess_page but it doesn't do anything.

Here is my module. The divs print fine but the regions don't get printed.

function custom_pages_menu() {

    $items['classes-admin/%'] = array(
        'title' => t('Classes'),
        'page callback' => 'page_sidebars',
        'access arguments' => array('edit field_diary_date'),
    );
    return $items;
}

function page_sidebars() {
    $page_return = "";
    $page_return .= '<div class="container-fluid">
                                <div class="row">
                                    <div class="col-md-6">
                                        <div class="panel-pane">';
    $page_return .=                     render($region['sidebar_left']); // or $page
    $page_return .=             '</div>
                                    </div>
                                    <div class="col-md-6">
                                        <div class="panel-pane">';
    $page_return .=                     render($region['sidebar_right']); // or $page
    $page_return .=                 '</div>
                                   </div>
                                </div>
                            </div>';

    return $page_return;
}

This seems like a pretty common thing to do but google isn't giving me anything to work with. I don't want to add them to page.tpl because it's a very complex site and I only want it this way, if possible. Any help appreciated.

Answer 1

Well, replace this line

render($region['sidebar_left']); 

with

render(block_get_blocks_by_region('sidebar_left'));

and replace this line

render($region['sidebar_right']);

with

render(block_get_blocks_by_region('sidebar_right'));

hope it will work for your case :)