Question

I have following XML:

<reference name="content">
    <block type="name/myblockname" name="blockname" alias="blockalias" template="name/myblockname.phtml">
        <action method="setData"><key>name</key><value>value</value></action>
        <block type="core/template" name="otherblock" template="catalog/product/view/otherblock.phtml"/>
    </block>
</reference>

And I need same as code in block constructor, I tried this. Result was that block was rendered, but getChild inside name/myblockname.phtml returns null value and not the block.

class MyCompany_ModuleName_Block_MyBlock extends Mage_Core_Block_Template
{

    public function  __construct() {
        parent::__construct();
        // $layout = $this->getLayout();  // this didn't work
        // $layout = Mage::getModel('core/layout'); // this didn't work
        $layout = $this->loadLayout()->getLayout(); // this didn't work
        $block = $layout->createBlock("core/template");
        $block->setTemplate("catalog/product/view/otherblock.phtml");
        $block->setNameInLayout("otherblock");
        $this->append($block, "otherblock");

    }

    // ... other stuff here ...

}

Here is how I am including my block to CMS page:

{{block type="name/myblockname" name="value" template="name/myblockname.phtml"}}

I want to know what I am doing wrong or is this even possible in Magento? (Don’t worry about xml etc. namings, I had to overwrite those, because they contained company data, so they could be wrong in this example, but most likely are not in original code.)

Answer 1

I highly recommend to use the “fake”-constructor _construct(), which is called by the core __construct() to avoid misusage.
Then to add a new child block use this code:

function _construct() {
    $layout = Mage::getSingleton('core/layout');
    $block  = $layout->createBlock('core/template','mychildblockname');
    $block->setTemplate('your/childtemplate.phtml');
    $this->append($block);
}

Then in the block’s phtml file, you call the child by:

$this->getChildHtml('mychildblockname');