Layout XML block rendered twice in Magento skin

Question

I'm having a bit of trouble with a custom layout block which I'm trying to add to the head.phtml file of my theme. Basically, I'm trying to add extra favicon definitions to the header of my document.

In my local.xml file, I've added the lines:

<default>
    <reference name="head">
        <block type="core/template" name="favicon.extra" as="favicon.extra" template="page/html/head/favicon-extra.phtml" />
    </reference>
</default>

And then inside head.phtml, I'm calling this as a childHtml template as:

<link rel="icon" href="<?php echo $this->getFaviconFile(); ?>" type="image/x-icon" />
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="<?php echo $this->getFaviconFile(); ?>" type="image/x-icon" />
<?php echo $this->getChildHtml('favicon.extra') ?>

The problem is that the block is rendered twice, in two different spots:

1. Underneath the other favicons, as per the head.phtml getChildHtml call, and
2. After the other scripts in the header

The desired outcome is that I only want the first of these two to render.

From what I've read, I think this has to do with that particular block/reference being automatically rendered via the toHtml output - is this correct?

If so, is there a better/correct way to accomplish what I'm trying to do here? Is there another way to remove the second render?

Any help possible is much appreciated.

Note: apologies if this is considered bad practice but I'm reposting a question I posted on StackOverflow (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/25348878/layout-xml-block-rendered-twice-in-magento-skin) as I thought this might be a more appropriate forum.

Answer 1

You don't need the line

<?php echo $this->getChildHtml('favicon.extra') ?>

in head.phtml.
There is already this line that renders all child blocks

<?php echo $this->getChildHtml() ?>

[EDIT]
If for some reason you want to add the block in a specific place, you can use this:

<?php echo $this->getChildHtml('favicon.extra') ?>
<?php this->unsetChild('favicon.extra');?>

Answer 2

One solution is to remove the xml code from local.xml and instead of

<?php echo $this->getChildHtml('favicon.extra') ?>

in the header.phtml , use following code:

<?php  echo $this->getLayout()->createBlock('core/template')->setTemplate('page/html/head/favicon-extra.phtml'); ?>