Custom variable in block always giving last requested value in phtml file

Question

I've injected custom variable named slider_id to my block like below,

    <reference name="content">
         <block type="sliderpro/sliderpro" name="defaultslider" as="defaultslider" before="-" template="sliderpro/defaultslider.phtml" >
               <action method="setData"><name>slider_id</name><value>1</value></action>
         </block>
         <block type="sliderpro/sliderpro" name="defaultslider" as="defaultslider" before="-" template="sliderpro/defaultslider.phtml" >
                <action method="setData"><name>slider_id</name><value>3</value></action>
          </block>
     </reference>

Under defaultslider.phtml,

echo $this->getSliderID(); // Outputs 3

I need to grab both the requested slider_id's i,e 1 & 3.

Any idea how to achieve this ?

Answer 1

You can do this:

<reference name="content">
     <block type="sliderpro/sliderpro" name="defaultslider" as="defaultslider" before="-" template="sliderpro/defaultslider.phtml" >
           <action method="setData"><name>slider_id</name><value>1,3</value></action>
     </block>
 </reference>

Then get the slider ids like this:

$sliderIds = explode(',', $this->getSliderId());

Then you will always have an array with ids even i you set the value to 1 or 1,3.

[EDIT]
If you want 2 sliders on the page with 2 different ids, just give different names to the sliders in the xml.

<reference name="content">
     <block type="sliderpro/sliderpro" name="defaultslider" as="defaultslider" before="-" template="sliderpro/defaultslider.phtml" >
           <action method="setData"><name>slider_id</name><value>1</value></action>
     </block>
     <block type="sliderpro/sliderpro" name="defaultslider_1" as="defaultslider_1" before="-" template="sliderpro/defaultslider.phtml" >
            <action method="setData"><name>slider_id</name><value>3</value></action>
      </block>
 </reference>