Comments on: Programatically create Magento blocks and inject them into layout

By: Margots

Margots — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 19:05:58 +0000

Can you create block in the xml layout file. For example, I want to use X block

X block name

X – new block that needs to be created, but how to do it in layout xml file?
Simply putting following will not work

By: mzouhel

mzouhel — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 15:12:07 +0000

Can i add a custom template to my backend ?
i want print my orders in html format and i need to create a block under adminhtml

By: pneumatyka

pneumatyka — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 08:02:46 +0000

Wonderfull, just what I was looking for simplest module possible. Thx!

By: cnboy

cnboy — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 06:25:42 +0000

thanks !it is helpful for me

By: Erik Hansen

Erik Hansen — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 05:47:42 +0000

This comment box doesn’t like XML tags – it replaced some XML tags from my previous post with ….

Here’s the XML I posted:
…

By: Erik Hansen

Erik Hansen — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 05:43:14 +0000

The “createBlock” method is used in quite a few controllers throughout the Magento codebase. It’s especially used in the Adminhtml module. There are many places where a controller loads a block using the createBlock method, where that could have also been specified in a layout XML file. The createBlock method is essentially a more direct way of loading a block as opposed to typing up the XML for that block in a layout file.

When you see a … in a layout file, you should know that it ultimately gets loaded by the Mage_Core_Model_Layout class, the same object type that gets returned by $this->getLayout()

By: Erik Hansen

Erik Hansen — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 05:32:41 +0000

Thanks for another helpful post.

The code above can also be written as follows:
$block = $this->getLayout()->createBlock(
‘core/template’,
‘my_block_name_here’)
)->setTemplate(‘activecodeline/developer.phtml’);

Is it not better to load the Block using it’s “alias name”, so that in case it gets overridden by another module, the overridden class will be loaded?

By: Branko Ajzele

Branko Ajzele — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 14:06:35 +0000

Another example on how to space the block to any area of screen

$this->getLayout()->getBlock(‘right’)->insert($block, ‘catalog.compare.sidebar’, true);

This will position it on right sidebar under the ‘catalog.compare.sidebar’ block.