One of the great and interesting new features of Drupal 7 is the improved and extended Render API function. This post briefly covers some of the highlights of this updated feature available now in Drupal 7.

What is the Render API?

In previous versions of Drupal, things like blocks, callbacks and other node elements routed simple HTML data strings, which could then be assembled into the final node structure. At the theming level anyway! Now in Drupal 7, instead, the page output is compiled out of renderable arrays. This function renders an element using drupal_render(). The top level element is shown with show() before rendering, so it will always be rendered even if hide() had been previously used on it.

Advantages

Altering the final page output is a new concept in Drupal 7, which is a highly useful tool especially for custom site development and the many “last-minute” changes your team or your client wishes to be completed on various elements coming from the site’s existing modules.

The Render API feature in Drupal 7 also introduces the concept of render caching which allows you to cache the rendered output of resource intensive page elements.

Resources

• API documentation: http://api.drupal.org
• Render API doc on drupal.org: http://drupal.org/node/930760
• Examples module: http://drupal.org/project/examples
• DrupalCon session: The Render API in Drupal 7