Query pager not showing for administrator

Question

I am having an interesting problem with paging the results of a query. The pager is visible to all users except those who are assigned the built-in 'administrator' role. I have tried the code on two separate Drupal installs and the result is the same: the administrator cannot see the pager. The markup is not visible in the page source.

I have tried my solution using both EntityFieldQuery and db_select, but the problem persists. Here is the code for the EntityFieldQuery version:

function build_area_table() {
  $header = array(
    'area_name' => array(
      'data' => 'Area',
      'type' => 'property',
      'specifier' => 'title',
      'sort' => 'asc',
    ),
    'level_range' => array(
      'data' => 'Level range',
      'type' => 'field',
      'specifier' => array('field' => 'field_area_level_range', 'column' => 'value'),
      'sort' => 'desc',
    ),
  );

  $query = new EntityFieldQuery();
  $query = $query->pager(5); # I have more than 5 rows being returned
  $query = $query->entityCondition('entity_type', 'node')
    ->propertyCondition('type', 'area')
    ->propertyCondition('status', 1)
    ->tableSort($header);

  $result = $query->execute();

  $nodes = null;
  // $result['node'] contains a list of nids where the title matches
  if (!empty($result['node'])) {
    // You could use node_load_multiple() instead of entity_load() for nodes
    $nodes = node_load_multiple(array_keys($result['node']));
  }

  // do something to output your results here.
  $td = array();
  foreach ($nodes as $area) {
    $td[] = array(
      'area_name' => array(
        'data' => l($area->title, 'node/'. $area->nid),
        'class' => array('area-name'),
        ),
        'level_range' => array(
          'data' => $area->field_area_level_range['und'][0]['safe_value'],
          'class' => array('level-range'),
        ),
    );
  }

  $areaTable = array(
    'area-table' => array(
      '#theme' => 'table',
      '#header' => $header,
      '#rows' => $td,
      '#empty' => 'No areas to display.',
    ),
    'area-pager' => array(
      '#markup' => theme('pager')
    ),
  );

  return $areaTable;
}

The table is rendered using Drupal 'render' in the template page. Does anyone have any ideas as to what the problem may be? I have read some posts regarding changing the pager ID, but any changes I make do not seem to have any effect.

EDIT: I am not using the Views module, which seems cause a conflict with pagers as reported by many other people.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Looks like I found the answer. It appears easier (and more efficient) to use the db_select instead, at least for the number of fields I am sorting on. As suspected it was the pager colliding with another pager on the page, although I am not sure what pager this could be. The pager seems to working fine for all users now that I added '->element(0)' to the db_select. Here is some code:

function build_area_table() {
  $header = array(
    'area_name' => array(
      'data' => 'Area',
      'field' => 'n.title',
      'sort' => 'asc',
    ),
    'level_range' => array(
      'data' => 'Level range',
      'field' => 'flr.field_area_level_range_value',
      'sort' => 'asc',
    ),
  );

  $query = db_select('node', 'n')
            ->extend('PagerDefault')->element(0) # fix displaying pager for all users
            ->extend('TableSort');
  $query->join('field_data_field_area_level_range', 'flr', 'n.nid = flr.entity_id');
  $result = $query
    ->fields('n', array('nid', 'title'))
    ->fields('flr', array('field_area_level_range_value'))
    ->condition('type', 'area')
    ->limit(2)
    ->orderByHeader($header)
    ->execute();

  # build the table
  $td = array();
  foreach ($result as $area) {
    $td[] = array(
      'area_name' => array(
        'data' => l($area->title, 'node/'. $area->nid),
        'class' => array('area-name'),
        ),
        'level_range' => array(
          'data' => format_area_level_range($area->field_area_level_range_value),
          'class' => array('level-range'),
        ),
    );
  }    

  $areaTable = array(
    'area-pager' => array(
      '#markup' => theme('pager')
    ),
    'area-table' => array(
      '#theme' => 'table',
      '#header' => $header,
      '#rows' => $td,
      '#empty' => 'No areas to display.',
    ),
  );

  return $areaTable;
}

I could probably achieve the same using EFQ, although I can't find an EFQ version of '->element()'. I tried specifying the element via theme like so:

theme('pager', array('element' => 0))

but there would need to be some kind of check based on the user role, as 0 works for administrators but not for other roles and vice versa. Hopefully this can save someone else some time as well!