title: Get value from <block> in page.xml
body: <p>I need to use the same custom made block 2 times on the same page but with different values loaded from the database.</p>
  
  <p>So I need to transfer a config value(Here called SimpleMenuInstanceRef) from my page.xml file to the block/model so each block knows what data to load from the database.</p>
  
  <p>I am doing it with this block:</p>
  
  <pre><code>    &lt;block template="simplemenu/leftMenuTemplate.phtml" type="simplemenu/standard" name="leftMenu" as="leftMenu" translate="label"&gt;
          &lt;label&gt;Left menu header&lt;/label&gt;
          &lt;action method="setSimpleMenuInstanceRef"&gt;&lt;SimpleMenuInstanceRef&gt;4&lt;/SimpleMenuInstanceRef&gt;&lt;/action&gt;
          &lt;/block&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>And this kinda works. In my leftMenuTemplate.phtml I can do a </p>
  
  <p>echo $this->getSimpleMenuInstanceRef() </p>
  
  <p>And this will show the value from the config. </p>
  
  <p>But I need the value in my blocks _construct method so I can load data depending on its value. But doing a $this->getSimpleMenuInstanceRef in _construct don't return anything. So how can I get the value in my block code, or do I need to transfer the value in an other way?</p>
  
  <p>Edit: Changed __construct to _construct to match real code.</p>