showing a full node with comments as a block in a panel

As the title of this entry suggests, I needed to show a full node with all comments and the comment form in a panel. Normally, you can only show the body of a node in a panel, not the full node with all its delicious extra goodies.

step 1

create a block, and enter as block body:

  $my_nid = 123; //replace this with your node id

  $my_node = node_load($my_nid);
  $my_output = node_show($my_node, 0);
  echo $my_output;

step 2

Create a panel and add the block a region of your choice.

Delightfully easy yet it took a hell of a long time to track down. Or I was just looking in the wrong places…