I am getting a block twice in Magento?

Question

I am trying to create product block on home page where in I copied page.xml to my theme's layout folder and modified it like

<page_two_columns_left translate="label">
<label>All Two-Column Layout Pages (Left Column)</label>
<reference name="root">
    <action method="setTemplate"><template>page/2columns-left.phtml</template></action>
    <!-- Mark root page block that template is applied -->
    <action method="setIsHandle"><applied>1</applied></action>
</reference>
<reference name="content">
   <block type="core/template" name="mycategories" output="toHtml" template="sweet/sweet.phtml"/>
 </reference>

Here I was expecting one one block in the middle of my Home page and i am getting that but in addition to this i am getting one more block (same as this block sweet.phtml) at the bottom of home page.. below the footer link. Can anyone tell me whats the problem.

Disparate

Are you trying replace some block named mycategories with your one? – Roomful

Answer 1

You've marked your block as an output block. When the view is rendered via renderView() in the controller action, your block is both a child of a block which echoes its children (content is a core/text_list block), as well as being an output block which will be rendered in its own right.

Remove the output="toHtml" bit and you will have what you need. By the way, you could / should move this change from a custom page.xml and into a local.xml file in your layout - it need only be inside a <page_two_columns_left /> layout update handle.

Bendicta

Great And Thank you... I have copied page.xml into my folder and it gets over ridden. i am making changes there only. Isn't it fine? – Disparate

Well, it interferes with the upgrade path. Ideally this kind of change would be made in a local.xml file in your theme's layout folder and you would leave page.xml where it is. Your local.xml would therefore contain <layout><page_two_columns_left><reference name="content"><block type="core/template" name="mycategories" output="toHtml" template="sweet/sweet.phtml"/> <.../> – Bendicta