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In Magento 2, you can suppress the display of a block using the remove tag

<referenceBlock name="product.info.media.image" remove="true"/>

However, this doesn't remove the block from the layout completely. If you tried to insert a new block with the name product.info.media.image, you'd get the following error

main.CRITICAL: exception 'Magento\Framework\Exception\LocalizedException' with message 'Element with ID 'product.info.media' already exists.' in /path/to/magento/framework/Data/Structure.php:151

Is there a way -- similar to Magento 1's unsetChild -- to completely remove a block.

Asking because many Magento 1 extension remove and reinsert blocks, and having a way to do this in Magento 2 would help with automated conversion tools.

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  • good point, so we are not able anymore, to change a blocks class. It might be intended behavior since it prevents that a template suddenly throws an error because you changed the block to a completely different one. You would still be able to swap it out via di configuration but it would have at least to extend the original block
    – David Verholen
    Feb 20, 2016 at 7:23

3 Answers 3

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As near I can tell, you can do do this at the PHP level, but not (as of the 2.0/GA release) at an XML level.

The layout structure object (Magento\Framework\View\Layout\Data\Structure), which is the single class that controls which elements are in, or not in, a specific request's layout, has an unsetChild and unsetElement method.

However, there doesn't appear to be any layout XML directives that allow you to pass through a raw unsetChild or unsetElement command.

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I believe this type of procedure would be seen as redundant in Magento 2 because you can easily move the block using the move layout instruction. Whereas previously this functionality was not implemented in Magento 1.*, so you had to remove the block and then reinsert it, whereas now you can simply move it.

 <move element="product.info.media.image" destination="destination"/>

EDIT: Though, perhaps I'm missing the point of the question completely, as you are Alan Storm, and you certainly probably already know this. Haha!

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  • +1 for good information -- the specific problem I was trying to solve here was implementing some functionality where a third party module replaces named block with its own version by unsetting, then adding with a new name.
    – Alana Storm
    Feb 21, 2016 at 23:39
  • Ah I see. In Magento 2, does it not override it using layout instructions in 'app/code/<Vendor>/<Module_Name>/View/frontend/layout/override'?
    – Gareth Daine
    Feb 24, 2016 at 11:20
  • If I could give you another +1 I would for more good information, but that's not quite what I was after either. The problem with override you're replacing an entire layout XML file. If the file you're replacing includes many blocks using an override increase the likelihood a Magento update will break things. What I'm looking for is a way to surgically say "remove this single block, replace it with another"
    – Alana Storm
    Feb 24, 2016 at 17:36
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The start of this thread is a little while away, but I want to state, that at least in Magento 2.1.x there is a Method "unsetChild". It can be called with the following code:

  <action method="unsetChild">
        <argument name="block" xsi:type="string">product.info.addtocart</argument>
    </action>
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