Magento 1.9 Action Handle not Identified

Question

I'm facing a problem developing Magento 1.9 custom module. Magento somehow doesn't recognize the action handle in my module's layout XML file. Below is simplified code that reproduces the problem for me.

Namespace: MAX
Module Name: News

app/code/local/MAX/News/etc/config.xml

<config>
    <frontend>
        <routers>
            <max_news_news>
                <use>standard</use>
                <args>
                    <module>MAX_News</module>
                    <frontName>news</frontName>
                </args>
            </max_news_news>
        </routers>
        <layout>
            <updates>
                <news module="MAX_News">
                    <file>max_news.xml</file>
                </news>
            </updates>
        </layout>
    </frontend>
    <global>
        <blocks>
            <news>
                <class>MAX_News_Block</class>
            </news>
        </blocks>
    </global>
</config>

app/code/local/MAX/News/controllers/IndexController.php

class MAX_News_IndexController extends Mage_Core_Controller_Front_Action
{
    public function indexAction()
    {
        $this->loadLayout();
        $this->renderLayout();
    }
}

app/design/frontend/base/default/layout/max_news.xml

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<layout version="0.1.0">
    <!-- <frontname>_<controller>_<action> -->
    <news_index_index>
        <reference name="content">
            <block type="news/featured" name="max_news_featured" template="max_news/featured.phtml"/>
        </reference>
    </news_index_index>
</layout>

app/code/local/MAX/News/Block/Featured.php

class MAX_News_Block_Featured extends Mage_Core_Block_Template
{
    public function getModData()
    {
        return array('ok', 'it', 'worked');
    }
}

app/design/frontend/base/default/template/max_news/featured.phtml

<h1 style="background: black; color:#fff;">Block template</h1>
<?php var_dump($this->getModData()) ?>

Problem:
My custom block doesn't show up on http://site.dev/news. But if I change the handle from <news_index_index> to <max_news_news_index_index>

(<namespace>_<module>_<frontname>_<controller>_<action>), it shows up. I cannot figure out where I went wrong. Might be something trivial.

I've inspected addActionLayoutHandles() and it indeed adds handle as max_news_news_index_index as a result of following line

app/code/core/Mage/Core/Controller/Varien/Action.php

$update->addHandle(strtolower($this->getFullActionName()));

I've error reporting turned on and magento is in developer mode. I'm seeing no exceptions on frontend nor in logs.

Any help would be really appreciated.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Basically handle consist of

RouteTag_ControllerName_ActionName

in config.xml

    <routers>
        <max_news_news> // Your Route Tag
            <use>standard</use>
            <args>
                <module>MAX_News</module>
                <frontName>news</frontName>
            </args>
        </max_news_news>
    </routers>

thats why your handel will be

<max_news_news_index_index>