Question

I created a new custom block and added it to the before_body_end block.
When I look in my pages’ source code, nothing appears from my custom block.
Could you help me debug this please ?

In my module layout XML file :

<layout version="0.1.0">
    <default>
        <reference name="before_body_end">
            <block type="tankchat/js_view" name="tankchat.js.view" as="tankchat" template="tankchat/js/view.phtml" />
        </reference>
    </default>
</layout>

Nothing special in my Company_Tankchat_Block_Js_View class, only some “getData” functions.

And my phtml is located at app/design/frontend/company/default/template/tankchat/js/view.phtml and yes it’s the good package and theme etc.

Do I need to add somewhere a echo $this->getChildHtml('tankchat') ? I think I don’t because my custom block is passed to before_body_end, but maybe I’m wrong ?

Any help will be highly appreciated !

Answer 1

Ok I finally found out what was wrong :

I made a mistake declaring my layout file, it need to be done in frontend node, not in global ! :

<config>
    <frontend>
        <layout>
            <updates>
                <tankchat>
                    <file>tankchat.xml</file>
                </tankchat>
            </updates>
        </layout>
    </frontend>
</config>

The file wasn’t even opened by the app…

But I also forgot to declare the blocks prefix in my module config file :

<config>
    <global>
        <blocks>
            <tankchat>
                <class>Company_Tankchat_Block</class>
            </tankchat>
        </blocks>
    </global>
</config>

The block class wasn’t found by autoloader…

Hope this will help someone in the future…