oliverdavies.uk-old-sculpin/source/_posts/entityform.md

---
title: Programmatically Load an Entityform in Drupal 7
date: 2015-12-22
excerpt:
  How to programmatically load, render and embed an entityform in Drupal 7.
tags:
  - drupal
  - drupal-7
  - drupal-planet
  - entityform
---

I recently had my first experience using the
[Entityform module](https://www.drupal.org/project/entityform) in a project. It
was quite easy to configure with different form types, but then I needed to
embed the form into an overlay. I was expecting to use the `drupal_get_form()`
function and render it, but this didn’t work.

Here are the steps that I took to be able to load, render and embed the form.

## Loading the Form

The first thing that I needed to do to render the form was to load an empty
instance of the entityform using `entityform_empty_load()`. In this example,
`newsletter` is the name of my form type.

```language-php
$form = entityform_empty_load('newsletter');
```

This returns an instance of a relevant `Entityform` object.

## Rendering the Form

The next step was to be able to render the form. I did this using the
`entity_form_wrapper()` function.

As this function is within the `entityform.admin.inc` file and not autoloaded by
Drupal, I needed to include it using `module_load_include()` so that the
function was available.

```language-php
module_load_include('inc', 'entityform', 'entityform.admin');

$output = entityform_form_wrapper($form, 'submit', 'embedded'),
```

The first argument is the `Entityform` object that was created in the previous
step (I’ve [submitted a patch](https://www.drupal.org/node/2639584) to type hint
this within entityform so that it’s clearer what is expected), which is
required.

The other two arguments are optional. The second argument is the mode (`submit`
is the default value), and the last is the form context. `page` is the default
value, for use on the submit page, however I changed this to `embedded`.

I could then pass this result into my theme function to render it successfully
within the relevant template file.

## Resources

- [The entityform module](https://www.drupal.org/project/entityform)
- [My issue and patch to add the type hint to the entityform_form_wrapper function](https://www.drupal.org/node/2639584)