Setting the page title, meta description and keywords from the Block / phtml template in magento widget

Question

I created a dynamic landing page widget for manufacturers, where the widget would then create a dynamic landing page with links to categories, showing only the categories that are that have products by that manufacturer.

As part of this, I am trying to set the page title using this code

protected function _toHtml()
    {
     ......(build the page logic and stuff)

       $head = $this->getLayout()->getBlock('head');
       $head->setTitle($title);
       $head->setKeywords($keywords);
       $head->setDescription($description);
  }

But for some reason this doesn't do anything, as the title is set by the page / cms page - block that calls the widget.

Any ideas how to do this?

Answer 1

By the time your block's _toHtml() is called the header has already been rendered so setting it's title variable has no significant effect. You need to use a method that is executed earlier, like _prepareLayout() .