How in Block a productcollection of template render?

Question

How in Block

app/code/Name/Name/Block/Rewrite/TopMyMenu.php

a productcollection of template

"vendor/magento/module-catalog-widget/view/frontend/templates/product/widget/content/grid.phtml"

render?

$productCollection = $this->categoryFactory->create()->getCollection()
 ->addAttributeToSelect('*')
 ->addAttributeToFilter('is_active', 1)
 ->setOrder('position', 'ASC')
 ->addIdFilter($category->getChildren());

$html = $produCtcollection->toHtml(); ?????

• Fabian Schmengler: A product collection is just data, there is nothing to render. What are you trying to do? Display a product list like in category and search results?
• Andrej Wasemiller: Display a product list like in category

Answer 1

toHtml() return block's html output

Process

\vendor\magento\framework\View\Element\AbstractBlock.php

 public function toHtml()
 {
/* dode */
 $this->_beforeToHtml();
 $html = $this->_toHtml();
 $this->_saveCache($html);
/* dode */
 return $html;
 }

Next this goes to \vendor\magento\framework\View\Element\Template.php

protected function _toHtml()
{
 if (!$this->getTemplate()) {
 return '';
 }
 return $this->fetchView($this->getTemplateFile());
}

Renders block html. and $this->fetchView function retrieves the block view from file (template).

Assume you know templates are using block functions and blocks extends core classes ( Template.php or AbstractBlock.php not in all cases ).

The data is populating by using toHtml()

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

maybe I asked wrong... This solution I was looking for:

...
getBlockProductsHtml($productCollection);
...
 public function getBlockProductsHtml($collection) {
 $html = '';
 $html = $this->_layout
 ->createBlock('Magento\CatalogWidget\Block\Product\ProductsList')
 ->setTemplate('Namespace_Module::html/products-grid.phtml')
 ->setData('product_collection', $collection)
 ->toHtml();
 return $html;
 }

or

->setTemplate('Magento_CatalogWidget::product/widget/content/grid.phtml')

thanks to all