Magento - using the catalog/product_list block more than once

Question

I have a content slider I added, that shows selected products on my homepage and category pages. It's added using it's own xml layout file, and uses the catalog/product_list block to get the product information:

<reference name="root">
  <block type="catalog/product_list" name="content_slider">
    <action method="setTemplate">
        <template>content-slider.phtml</template>
    </action>
  </block>
</reference>

This all works fine, until you add more ways to sort your products in the category listings (such as by manufacturer) and then you get the error You cannot define a correlation name more than once seemingly becuse you can't use the catalog/product_list block twice. Changing the sliders block type to catalog/product_compare_list fixes this, but then the page title changes to Products Comparison List.

Is there some way to either extend the catalog/product_list block so it can be used more than once, or else some other block that can be used that holds all the product information, but won't affect my page title like the comparison one does?

Joe Constant Joe Constant · Accepted Answer · 2011-12-27T23:30:08

The problem is caused by the same table alias being used in a new join.

i.e. You are joining Table1 and Table2 together. First you alias Table1 as 'A' and Table2 as 'B'. Then you need to join to Table1 again. If you use alias 'A' again, then you will get this error. You need to change the table alias you are using to something more unique.

In your case, you may not actually need the additional join and that is why changing the parent block worked for you.

Magento - using the catalog/product_list block more than once

2 Answers