Drupal: remove "your name" elements from comment form
Unfortunately, Drupal displays the user name for the logged in user above the comment input field. It is entirely unnecessary so I wanted to remove it. Of course, you could revert to CSS but to me, that is not a solution, you're just hiding the label and data.
There is a Drupal post "Hiding comment form fields" with a snippet (best placed in a custom module) to remove access to the "your name" elements:
<?php
function mymodule_form_comment_form_alter(&$form, &$form_state) {
$form['author']['#access'] = FALSE;
}
?>You could add this hook to a custom module so it will be valid regardless of the theme you are using. However, I opted to move this code to phptemplate.php for my theme.
Since I wanted to hide the data for anonymous users only, I could have used the $user variable and test with: $user->uid but I find that rather ugly:
<?php
function YOURTHEME_form_comment_form_alter(&$form, &$form_state) {
/* Remove the "your name" elements for authenticated users */
global $user;
$form['author']['#access'] = ($user->uid == 0);
}
?>(Although Drupal's user_is_anonymous() and user_is_logged_in() are doing this.)
Looking at the DEVEL tab for a post, I saw how the author name is displayed:
and similarly, how there is an element called is_anonymous (bottom of screendump):
So why not create the following code:
<?php
function YOURTHEME_form_comment_form_alter(&$form, &$form_state) {
/* Remove the "your name" elements for authenticated users */
$form['author']['#access'] = $form['is_anonymous']['#value'];
}
?>Clean solution. Now the "your name" will be hidden for authenticated users, but not for anonymous users:
Mission accomplished.
Edit Dec 21, 2014
I ran into a snag with this solution. If a user has the "administer comments" permission the administrative fieldset is visible. This is tested in comment.module with: <?php $is_admin = (!empty($comment->cid) && user_access('administer comments')); ?>.
Normally, the administrative fieldset is visible:
But if the comment author name is not visible the fieldset is not visible either when editing a comment from a user:
In order to work around this, I changed the template.php code to test for the edit argument:
<?php
function MYTHEME_form_comment_form_alter(&$form, &$form_state) {
// Remove the author field for authenticated users (when not editing comment)
if ($form['is_anonymous']['#value'] == false && arg(2) != 'edit') {
$form['author']['#access'] = false;
}
}
?>
Comments
Thanks for sharing, that's what I was looking for and wasn't aware of is_anonymous
I didn't know either, it's worth peeking at the devel screens.
Great post
very useful. thanks a bunch!
Thanks !!! After 2 days of trying, your solutions worked! +1
Thanks! After 2 days, it finally works !