Magento not displaying custom block

blockmagentomodule

I'm trying to have just a little "hello world" like module to learn how to make modules. I've got a fairly fresh install of Magento 1.7 on a Mac OSX 10.6 local server. I'm following Pierrefay's Turtorial and I cant get the block to display. I've been all over the web, but nothing has worked. The module's page just shows the default look with the 'dog' and the 'Back to School' ad. I've got Alan's Layoutviewer module. I'm currently in debug mode and emptying the cache like mad. I have already told Mag. not to cache anything,anyway. I've managed to reach the point where I'm not generating error messages (I'm also in debug mode and have execption.log and system.log pulled up).

My Controller:

<?php
class Nationwide_Cartonplugin_IndexController extends Mage_Core_Controller_Front_Action {
    public function indexAction ()
   {
     $this->loadLayout();
     $this->renderLayout();
     //var_dump(Mage::getSingleton('core/layout')->getUpdate()->getHandles());
    //exit("bailing early at ".__LINE__." in ".__FILE__);
     //echo "Carton Exists";

     //Mage::log(
     //   $this->getLayout()->getUpdate()->getHandles(),
     //   null, ‘layout.log’ );
     //Mage::log(
     //  $this->getLayout()->getUpdate()->asString(),
     //  null, ‘layout.log’ );
   }
   public function mamethodeAction ()
   {
     echo 'test mymethod';
    }
}

My Config:

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<config>
    <modules>
        <Nationwide_Cartonplugin>
            <version>1.1.0</version>
        </Nationwide_Cartonplugin>
    </modules>
    <global>
        <blocks>
            <cartonplugin>
                <class>Nationwide_Cartonplugin_Block</class>
            </cartonplugin>
        </blocks>
    </global>
    <frontend>
        <routers>
            <cartonplugin>
                <use>standard</use>
                <args>
                    <module>Nationwide_Cartonplugin</module>
                    <frontName>carton</frontName>
                </args>
            </cartonplugin>
        </routers>
        <layout>
            <updates>
                <cartonplugin>
                    <file>carton.xml</file>
                </cartonplugin>
            </updates>
        </layout>
    </frontend>
</config>

My Layout: (frontend/default/nationwide/layout/carton.xml)(I'm using default & nationwide in the admin setup)

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<layout version="0.1.0">
      <default>
          <reference name="content">
          </reference>
      </default>
      <cartonplugin_index_index>
           <reference name="content">
                <block output="toHtml" type="cartonplugin/myblock"  name="myblock"
                          template="cartonplugin/cartondisplay.phtml"/>
           </reference>
      </cartonplugin_index_index>
</layout>

Uncomenting the references generate a "not valid template" error.

My Template: (frontend/default/nationwide/template/cartonplugin/cartondisplay.phtml)

<?php
//echo $this->methodcarblock();
?>

 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
        "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
    <title>Hello World</title>
    <style type="text/css">
        body {
            background-color:#f00;
        }
    </style>
</head>
<body>
    <div class="test1">
        <?php echo $this->methodcarblock(); ?>
    </div>
</body>
</html>

My block:

<?php

class Nationwide_Cartonplugin_Block_Myblock extends Mage_Core_Block_Template
{
     public function methodcarblock()
     {
         return 'informations about my block !!';
     }
}

It seems I follow everying on the web and nothing still works, other than echoing from the index action. I would greatly appreciate any help.

Best Answer

You are getting no errors when uncommenting because Magento just doesn't try to call the block :) So this a silent error...

Indeed, as says the error, Magento is trying to reach file frontend/base/default/template/cartonplugin/cartondisplay.phtml which means that your design configuration is (I guess) not correct if the file frontend/default/nationwide/template/cartonplugin/cartondisplay.phtml really exists.

So, are you sure your package / theme is correctly configured in the system configuration, design tab? Make sure that package is "default" and theme templates is "nationwide".

Something like the picture below is a good configuration to tell Magento to call templates that reside in frontend/default/nationwide/template/ instead of frontend/base/default/template/ (may need some fine tuning depending on your existing configuration and store views)

enter image description here

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