reports/product_viewed block wont render at all

Question

In trying to solve this issue Ive read a few different articles, and ended up trying to output the Recently Viewed Products file in a variety of ways, and none of them seem to be working.

Here is the relevant bits in local.xml:

<catalog_product_view>
    <reference name="content">
        <reference name="product.info">
            <block type="reports/product_viewed" name="reports.product.viewed" template="reports/product_viewed.phtml"/>
            <block type="core/template" name="reports.product.viewed2" template="reports/product_viewed.phtml"/>
        </reference>
    </reference>
</catalog_product_view>

I have these lines at the very top of reports/product_viewed.phtml:

<pre>hello</pre>
<?php if ($_products = $this->getRecentlyViewedProducts()): ?>

This is how I am trying to output the recently viewed products in catalog/product/view.phtml

<hr>
<?php echo $this->getChildHtml('reports.product.viewed'); ?>
<hr>
<?php echo $this->getChildHtml('reports.product.viewed2'); ?>
<hr>
<?php echo $this->getLayout()->createBlock('reports/product_viewed')->setTemplate('reports/‌​product_viewed.phtml')->toHtml(); ?>
<hr>

All of this outputs the following:

---

---

hello

---

---

Basically, the product_viewed file only outputs anything when it is inserted as a core/template block, but obviously it wont work properly unless its inserted as a reports/product_viewed block. However the product_viewed file wont render at all if its inserted as a reports/product_viewed block.

This is the same if I have logged into an account or if I am viewing the site as a guest.

Refreshing the statistics in the Admin Panel made no difference.

This is in Magento 1.9.2.2.

Does anyone have and ideas as to why my reports/product_viewed block wont render at all?

Answer 1

Looks like you disabled module output for Mage_Reports in System > Configuration > Advanced.

These settings don't really disable the module, but make all blocks of it output nothing.