conditionally change layout template for catalogsearch

Question

What I need to do is, if a person search for a product then if products found the layout need to be page/2columns-left.phtml with layered navigation but if there were no results then its layout should be page/1column.phtml and it will display new products, popular products.

One of the solution I came around is to override the CatalogSearch/ResultController's indexAction() where I can get whether $query->getNumResults() is 0 or not. On that basis how could I load layout differently?

If there's another better approach to this, that would be helpful too.

Answer 1

1.Add layout handle in catalogsearch.xml:

<NO_SEARCH_RESULTS>
    <reference name="root">
        <action method="setTemplate"><template>page/1column.phtml</template></action>
    </reference>
    <reference name="content">
        <!--  add your blocks here-->
    </reference>
</NO_SEARCH_RESULTS>

2.Load this handle in controller:

public function indexAction()
{
    /**
     * some codes here
     */

    $this->loadLayout();
    if ($someValueIsTrue) {
        $this->getLayout()->getUpdate()->addHandle('NO_SEARCH_RESULTS');
        $this->loadLayoutUpdates();
        $this->generateLayoutXml()->generateLayoutBlocks();
    }

    $this->renderLayout();
}

Answer 2

Take a look at this article: http://sandersluis.com/2011/11/changing-the-page-template-in-a-magento-controller/. Hope this helps.