How to Add Condition Check to Determine which Template will be used in Transactional Emails?

Question

I am trying to modify my email template to generate different product information based on customer group. As in, if a customer belongs to Group A, load modified.phtml, else load default.phtml.

Specifically, I am working with the New Order email template where the base transactional email template calls {{layout handle="sales_email_order_items" order=$order}}, which loads the template file in /app/design/frontend/rwd/default/template/email/order/items.phtml.

This template eventually calls echo $this->getItemHtml($_item).

From what I can tell, this loads the template file /app/design/frontend/rwd/default/template/email/order/items/order/default.phtml, which outputs the template information to print each item's content (SKU, Name, Price, etc) in the table.

This is what I'm trying to accomplish:

$customerGroupId    = $this->getCustomerGroupId();
$customerGroupName  = Mage::getModel('customer/group')->load($customerGroupId)->getCustomerGroupCode();
if($customerGroupName = 'A') {
    // How to getItemHtml from different template?
} else {
    echo $this->getItemHtml($_item)
}

I assume that I will need to add reference to my modified.phtml in the /app/design/frontend/rwd/default/layout/sales.xml file like so:

<sales_email_order_items>
    <block type="sales/order_email_items" name="items" template="email/order/items.phtml">
        <action method="addItemRender"><type>default</type><block>sales/order_email_items_order_default</block><template>email/order/items/order/default.phtml</template></action>
        // modified.phtml reference here?

Can I make getItemHtml specify a different template?

Or is there a different way I need to be approaching this?

I could replace the {{layout handle...}} with a {{block...}} call and put all of the template information within my if... else... blocks, but this seems very hacky. Any thoughts or suggestions?

Answer 1

To change the itemHtml depends upon the customer group. You can achieve that in layout file using a helper method.

<sales_email_order_items> 
     <block type="sales/order_email_items" name="items" template="email/order/items.phtml">
         <action method="addItemRender"><type>default</type><block>sales/order_email_items_order_default</block><template helper="mymodule/data/myFunction"/></action>

Then create myFunction in your helper file

 app/code/{local|community}/yourNamespace/yourModule/helper/Data.php.

Use the below code

Update :

public function myFunction()
{
    $customerGroupName = '';
    if($customerGroupId = Mage::getSingleton('adminhtml/sales_order_create')->getQuote()->getCustomerGroupId()):
        $customerGroupName = Mage::getModel('customer/group')->load($customerGroupId)->getCustomerGroupCode();
    elseif(Mage::getSingleton('customer/session')->isLoggedIn()):
        $customerGroupId = Mage::getSingleton('customer/session')->getCustomerGroupId();
        $customerGroupName = Mage::getModel('customer/group')->load($customerGroupId)->getCustomerGroupCode();
    endif;
    if($customerGroupName == 'General') { 
       return 'email/order/items/order/default.phtml'; 
    } else { 
      return 'email/order/items/order/another.phtml';
    }
 }

That's it.