Magento Block Series – Day One

Magento Blocks are the soul of magento template system , Any magento template system if full of block elements .

What is Magento Block 

Blocks are basically combination of three entities

★ Class

★ Phtml Filles

★ XML

Here is the sample declaration for the block

<block type="webkul/slideshow" name="webkulslideshow"
 template="webkul/slideshow.phtml"/>

As you can see in the above block code  here the class name is inside the type

Type = Php class(Mage_Webkul_Block_Slideshow) where all the function are defined which are used in phtml file or view file inside webkul/slideshow.phtml

name – is a unique identifies for this particular block

<block type="Mage_Webkul_Block_Slideshow" 
name="webkulslideshow" template="webkul/slideshow.phtml"/>

template = file location for the view file

Best thing with blocks are you can call those block inside cms pages or under static block of magento  . using  curly braces e.g

{{block type=”webkul/slideshow” template=”webkul/slideshow”}}

[stextbox id=”info”]In Magento2 we will use full name of the class instead of type e.g [/stextbox]

<block type="Mage_Webkul_Block_Slideshow" 
name="webkulslideshow" template="webkul/slideshow.phtml"/>

Example : 

suppose that i have a phtml file (magento view file new.phtml)  and i want to call this phtml file as a block  in magento default template .

i have added following code on new.phtml at app/design/frontend/default/default/template/Sleekaccordian

<h1 style="border:5px solid red;">WebKul Test Block</h1>

now i am going to call this block using following block code from poll.xml ( location app/design/frontend/base/default/layout)

and added the following code in poll.xml under <deafult>

<reference name="left">
	<block type="core/template" name="sleek" template ="Sleekaccordian/new.phtml" />

</reference>

And here is the output of the block

 

Dont worry about reference thing will explain in details in next series of the magento blocks .

You can also enable template path hints and magento block hints from magento admin (under system->configuration->developer->advance->developer)

 Play With Blocks

You may change the location of the block . e.g suppose that you want to change the location of the block from left to right . so you need to change only reference code

 

also suppose that if you want to change the order of the block e.g you want your block after the newsletter block , In this case magento provide before and after handlers  which we can call in our block code

<reference name="left">
<block type="core/template" after="left.newsletter" 
name="sleek" template ="Sleekaccordian/new.phtml" /></reference>

and here is the output

Another note about the type attribute, its not actually a directory/file structure, rather, it’s a URI that is mapped with the Magento autoloader. “Core” relates back to the Mage_Core_Block_Core class (under the app/code/core/Mage/Core directory) and then the info after the slash relates to the folders inside of that directory. So type=”core/template” resolves to this class Mage_Core_Block_Core_Template which is located at app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Template.php. All the type attribute is doing is telling Magento which methods you need to load inside of your block.