Magento - Add 'Customer Account Navigation' to custom module page

Question

I have a custom module in my magento store. It is currently using the default 2 column layout with magento's left nav as the lefthand sidebar.

How can i go about having the customer account navigation in my left sidebar instead? My current xml file for my module is:

earnings.xml

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<layout version="0.1.0">
    <earnings_index_index>
        <reference name="content">
            <block type="earnings/earnings" name="earnings" />
        </reference>
    </earnings_index_index>
</layout>

Answer 1

You just need to use the XML function

<earnings_index_index translate="label">
    <update handle="customer_account"/>
    <reference name="my.account.wrapper">
        <block type="core/template" name="earnings" template="earnings/earnings.phtml" />
    </reference>
</earnings_index_index>

To change the default title within your controller you'll need to place

$this->getLayout()->getBlock('head')->setTitle($this->__('Title here'));

Withing your loadLayout() and renderLayout() calls, such as:

$this->loadLayout()
$this->getLayout()->getBlock('head')->setTitle($this->__('Title here'));
$this->renderLayout();

Answer 2

Below are the snippet on adding link to left navigation in my account section.

<customer_account translate="label">        
            <reference name="customer_account_navigation">
                <action method="addLink" translate="label"><name>nameoflink</name><path>path/index/index/</path><label>Custom Account Link</label></action>
            </reference>
        </customer_account>

Answer 3

You can set a page layout using root block. Here is the code that you need to try

<earnings_index_index>
        <reference name="root">
            <action method="setTemplate"><template>page/2columns-right.phtml</template></action>
        </reference>
         <reference name="content">
             <!-- put content blocks here -->
         </reference>
</earnings_index_index>

Take a look on the section root block. This block is use to set layout template that need to use while render the page. Here it is set to 2columns-right.phtml. This template allow navigation section in the right side. Take a look at app/design/frontend/<pockage>/<theme>/template/page/ directory. There you can see page layout template files that are use to constitute the page structure. You can use any of those layout files by specifying there name in root block.