Creating a block with installation profile

Question

To create a block I am currently using this code:

$default_theme = variable_get('theme_default', getDefaultTheme());
$blocks = array(
  array(
    'module' => 'user',
    'delta' => 'login',
    'theme' => $default_theme,
    'status' => 1,
    'weight' => 0,
    'region' => 'sidebar_first',
    'pages' => '',
    'cache' => -1,
    ),
);

// Save blocks
$query = db_insert('block')->fields(array('module', 'delta', 'theme', 'status', 'weight', 'region', 'pages', 'cache'));
foreach ($blocks as $block) {
  $query->values($block);
}
$query->execute();

My question is what do the 'module' and 'delta' field exactly do? What can I fill in there if I made a custom block? And how do I define on which pages this block should be visible, should I add a page name or id?

Answer 1

I think that's not the correct way of creating the block as it won't fire the required api call for block creation and later on will cause issue.

Delta: This is a unique identifier for the block within the module. Delta values only need to be unique and is used in following purposes:

• Passed into the other block hooks in your module as an argument to identify the block being configured or viewed.
• Used to construct the default HTML ID of "block-MODULE-DELTA" applied to each block when it is rendered. This ID may then be used for CSS styling or JavaScript programming.
• Used to define a theming template suggestion of block_MODULE_DELTA, for advanced theming possibilities.

Module: Name of module creating that block. E.g: If you are creating the block from custom module than it will take the value of that module name.

---

To programatically create the block, you need to use hook_block_info(), hook_block_view() in your custom module something like below:

/**
 * Implements hook_block_info().
 */
function MyModule_block_info() {
  $blocks['test1'] = array(
    'info' => t('Block info 1'),
  );
  $blocks['test'] = array(
    'info' => t('Block info 2'),
  );

  return $blocks;
}


/**
 * Implements hook_block_view().
 */
function MyModule_block_view($delta = '') {
  $block = array();

  switch ($delta) {
    case 'test1':
      $block['content'] = 'Required content 1';
      break;

    case 'test2':
      $block['content'] = 'Required content  2';
      break;
  }

  return $block;
}