How to render a ctools content type programmatically?

Question

I have a ctools plugin aka. content-type aka. panel pane. How does one render it programmatically ?

Answer 1

ctools_content_render() is the solution.

Answer 2

There is a great and simple example on how to do this in the ctools_ajax_sample module (in the CTools suite).

As it has been pointed out, the key is to use the function ctools_content_render().

The example shows how to populate the arguments of the function, although you obviously have to customize it according to your needs.

This thread in Drupal Groups gives more insight on how to load the right context.

File ctools/ctools_ajax_sample/ctools_ajax_sample.module

function ctools_ajax_simple_form() {
  ctools_include('content');
  ctools_include('context');
  $node = node_load(1);
  $context = ctools_context_create('node', $node);
  $context = array('context_node_1' => $context);
  return ctools_content_render('node_comment_form', 'node_comment_form', ctools_ajax_simple_form_pane(), array(), array(), $context);
}

function ctools_ajax_simple_form_pane() {
  $configuration = array(
    'anon_links' => 0,
    'context' => 'context_node_1',
    'override_title' => 0,
    'override_title_text' => '',
  );
  return $configuration;
}

Answer 3

If you load the required file, all you really need to do, is to call the render function (hook_content_type_render) which will return a standard class object, much like hook_block_view does.
All you need from there is a theme function, unless you just want to render the raw output directly.

In code it could look something like this:

function render_ctools_content($subtype, $conf, $panel_args, $context, $function, $file, $theme = TRUE) {
  require_once $file;
  $pane = new stdClass();
  if (function_exists($function)) {
    $pane = $function($subtype, $conf, $panel_args, $context); // hook_content_type_render
  }
  if ($theme) {
    return theme('module_ctools_content', array('pane' => $pane));
  }
  return $pane->content;
}

Answer 4

I was able to pull a panelized page in panopoly using the following code:

module_load_include('inc', 'page_manager', 'plugins/tasks/node_view');
$node = node_load($nid);
$render = page_manager_node_view_page($node);
echo drupal_render($render);