Magento Getting the URL for a Block phtml

Question

I'm writing a payment module and upon returning a successful authorisation from the server, I'd like to open a window with a template file in there to manage redirection to the payment service provider's authentication procedure.

How do I get the URL for the block's phtml file?
I want to run it into a JS function to open in a lightbox.

Answer 1

It depends what exactly you want to achieve.

If you are for example in a specific action and you know the block which has the template you can do something like

$this->getLayout()->getBlock('specific_block')->getTemplate()

to return the template file of the current block or

$template = Mage::getSingleton('core/layout')->getBlock('specific_block')->getTemplate();