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Quick dispatches from the life of a working programmer.
If you’re having trouble with a call like
echo $this->getChildHtml('foo');
returning an empty string, add the following debug code to your template
var_dump(array_keys($this->_children));
This will print out all the children of the current block. If you don’t see the block you’re trying to echo above, that means your block (foo above) isn’t being correctly added to the current block. Check the your custom layout xml for subtle errors (missing name, type, etc.)