How can I get the products list block using getLayout()->getBlock()?

Question

How can I get the block containing all the products using getLayout()->getBlock()? (or with another method, as long as I get the block).

And also - is there a list with all the options I can provide to getBlock()? or can I somehow find it from the XML files in a reasonable way?

I didn't find any decent docs for this function.

Answer 1

Every block that is defined in the layout XML files has a name which must be unique for a single request. For example, in catalog.xml, within the catalog_category_layered (Anchor category page) and catalog_category_default (Category page) handles:

<block type="catalog/product_list" name="product_list" template="catalog/product/list.phtml">
                                   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Use this name as parameter for getBlock().

Note that it's possible to have anonymous blocks without a name (technically they have a name but you cannot predict it), these are created dynamically from the code, with createBlock() and there is no generic way to retrieve them.