I've been through no end of examples and "nearly what I want" questions and answers, but can't find what I want, I hope the community can help me out here.
What I am trying to acheive is to conditionally add an external link to the customer_account_navigation block, that leads to a 3rd party service in a new tab/window.
I have a brand new module to do this in, for example's sake this namespace/module will be called Cygnus_ExternalCustomerLink.
The main thing to consider is that we're using a highly customised theme and there are 3rd party modules that are also adding items to this navigation. I can handle these (they are not rewiting the block, but adding items via layout.xml) but I wanted to declare them just in case.
So at first I looked to using addLink to achieve this, howeve I am limited in that addLink won't take an external link (as far as I know!) and also while I can get the addLink layout.xml to work it won't actually display the link! (I debugged the addLink function and can see it being called for my link, but by the time navigation.phtml is parsed it is gone again!
So I'm looking for some guidence on how to add an external link here, without overriding the template completely (in case other modules wish to get involved). Otherwise an internal link to get me started would be great!
Here's my code so far. I have tried an alternative method that involves adding a child block that adds a link to the parent, found here (Create link dynamically in customer account navigation) but I can't get this to work either.
config.xml
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<config>
<modules>
<Cygnus_ExternalCustomerLink>
<version>0.3.9</version>
</Cygnus_ExternalCustomerLink>
</modules>
<frontend>
<layout>
<updates>
<cygnus_externalcustomerlink>
<file>cygnus_externalcustomerlink.xml</file>
</cygnus_externalcustomerlink>
</updates>
</layout>
</frontend>
<global>
<helpers>
<Cygnus_ExternalCustomerLink>
<class>Cygnus_ExternalCustomerLink_Helper</class>
</Cygnus_ExternalCustomerLink>
</helpers>
</global>
</config>
cygnus_externalcustomerlink.xml (Layout)
I try 2 methods here, first is a bog standard addLink, the second is my attempt at the solution linked above
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<layout version="0.1.0">
<customer_account>
<reference name="customer_account_navigation">
<!-- this is my first attempt to add any old link to the nav -->
<action method="addLink">
<name>Test Name</name>
<path>customer_account/index</path>
<label>Test Label</label>
</action>
<!-- this is my attempt to add a block that effects the parent -->
<block
type="Cygnus_ExternalCustomerLink/customer_link"
as="cygnus_externalcustomerlink_customer_link"
name="cygnus_externalcustomerlink_customer_link"
>
<action method="addCustLinkToParentBlock" />
</block>
</reference>
</customer_account>
</layout>
Block/Customer/Link.php (the add to parent from new block method)
This block doesn't fire at all, if you see the dodgy print <pre>, this is never hit.
<?php
class Cygnus_ExampleCustomerLink_Block_Customer_Link extends Mage_Core_Block_Abstract
{
public function addCustLinkToParentBlock()
{
print "<pre>Testing!</pre>";
$parent = $this->getParentBlock();
if ($parent) {
if (true) {
$parent->addLink(
'MyLabel2',
'customer_account/index',
'MyTitle2'
);
}
}
}
}
PS> As stated I have tried a number of solutions in posts from here, and elsewhere but all to no avail. I may be getting solution blindness here but I'm happy to try a method again.
EDIT : While ths issue is resolved below, this is not an accurate method above on how to add an external link.
I will elaborate, in customer_account there is only an addLink function available which only takes an internal URL. so I added my own "addLink" alternative function. I did this by overloading Mage_Customer_Block_Account_Navigation in my module, and adding the below code:
class Cygnus_ExternalCustomerLink_Block_Customer_Account_Navigation extends Mage_Customer_Block_Account_Navigation
{
public function addExternalLink($title)
{
//we have to hack the url value here to insert the external param, saved extensive template overriding
//note the missing tailing " quote, we are using a string with hacked in attributes as the "url" of the
//link, this is very messy however as the customer account menu has much less functionality than the top
//menu this was the path of least resistance...
$url = 'http://my.external.url' . '" target="_blank" rel="nofollow';
$this->_links[$title] = new Varien_Object(array(
'label' => $title,
'url' => $url,
'title' => $title
));
return $this;
}
}
Then obviously update the method attribute wherever you update this block in the layout (in my case it was local.xml).
