Inserting a select box before the search box (Drupal 7)

Question

I am pretty new to Drupal dev world. I wanted to know how to insert a select box before the search box. I used the below code to alter the search form and set the #weight to a higher value but the select box still shows up after the search box.

function mymodule_form_search_block_form_alter(&$form, &$form_state) {
  $form['my_field']= array(
    '#type' => 'select', 
    '#title' => t('whatever'), 
    '#options' => array(
      0 => 'option1',
      1 => 'option2',
    ), 
    '#default_value' => 255,
    '#weight' => 10,
  );
}

Answer 1

If you need the form field to be placed before any other form field present in the form, you need to use, for the weight, a lower value than the one used from the present form fields. The default value is 0; use a negative value to be sure the form field is always shown first (e.g. −200).

search_box() doesn't use any value for the field's weight, which means the default value is used.

  $form[$form_id] = array(
    '#type' => 'textfield', 
    '#title' => t('Search'), 
    '#title_display' => 'invisible', 
    '#size' => 15, 
    '#default_value' => '', 
    '#attributes' => array('title' => t('Enter the terms you wish to search for.')),
  );
  $form['actions'] = array('#type' => 'actions');
  $form['actions']['submit'] = array(
    '#type' => 'submit',
    '#value' => t('Search'),
  );
  $form['#submit'][] = 'search_box_form_submit';

I have used the following code in a test module.

function code_testing_form_search_block_form_alter(&$form, &$form_state) {
  $form['my_field'] = array(
    '#type' => 'select', 
    '#title' => t('whatever'), 
    '#options' => array(
      0 => 'option1',
      1 => 'option2',
    ), 
    '#default_value' => 255,
    '#weight' => -200,
  );
}

The search form appears as in the following screenshot.

Answer 2

Lowering the #weight will float and increasing it will sink the element in the form.

The #weight property is always honored by drupal_render() function only if whole form is rendered at once. But if form is rendered manually by parts then there is no way except to override it.