While theming page.tpl.php it's possible to check to see whether a region is empty, by checking the content of the relevant variable which contains the region's contents.

For example; Drupal 6

{syntaxhighlighter brush: php} <?php if($left) { // do something } ?>{/syntaxhighlighter}

Drupal 7

{syntaxhighlighter brush: php} <?php if($page['sidebar_first']) { // do something } ?>{/syntaxhighlighter}

However, region variables haven't been defined for templates at the block and node and view levels.

To deal with this case, I adapted part of the block.module code to create a function which can be inserted in your theme template.php file.

The function takes one parameter (a region name), and returns 1 if the region is empty or 0 if the region is occupied. The function examines the block visibility setting for the current path to work out if the region is occupied.

{syntaxhighlighter brush: php} <?php function region_empty($test_region) { /* Check to see if a region is occupied * returns 1 if it's empty */ $test_empty = 1; $result = db_query_range('SELECT n.pages, n.visibility FROM {blocks} n WHERE n.region="%s" AND n.theme="%s"', $test_region, $GLOBALS['theme'], 0, 10); if (count($result) > 0) { while ($node = db_fetch_object($result)) { if ($node->visibility < 2) { $path = drupal_get_path_alias($_GET['q']); // Compare with the internal and path alias (if any). $page_match = drupal_match_path($path, $node->pages); if ($path != $_GET['q']) { $page_match = $page_match || drupal_match_path($_GET['q'], $node->pages); } // When $block->visibility has a value of 0, the block is displayed on // all pages except those listed in $block->pages. When set to 1, it // is displayed only on those pages listed in $block->pages. $page_match = !($node->visibility xor $page_match); } else { $page_match = drupal_eval($block->pages); } if ($page_match) $test_empty = 0; } } return $test_empty; } ?> {/syntaxhighlighter}