Easy way to get Drupal Header and Footer?

Question

The title is probably not the best description. I want two functions:

getHeader();
getFooter();

The header must return all the content in the template.php file BEFORE

print $content;

And the latter must return everything after it.

Is this possible?

Answer 1

Instead of trying to get the all except $content and wrap your display in it, why don't you just take your content and theme it (put it into $content). That will be a lot easier, Drupal was meant for this.

Answer 2

Drupal makes use of "regions". What you can do is give your site three regions (header, content, footer).

Regions are defined in the theme's .info file in the form "region[backend_name] = Title that shows up in frontend". Having the regions "header", "content", and "footer" could be defined thus:

region[header] = This is the Header
region[content] = This is the Content
region[footer] = This is the Footer

After defining the regions in the .info file and enabling the theme, each region can be printed using the backend name thus:

print $header;
print $content;
print $footer;     

Blocks are assigned to a region at /admin/build/block