title: Passing data from layout to block controller using setData
body: <p>I'm trying to set a variable in my local.xml file for my custom block:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;layout&gt;
      &lt;!-- ... --&gt;
      &lt;page_homepage&gt;
          &lt;!-- ... --&gt;
          &lt;reference name="root"&gt;    
              &lt;!-- ... --&gt;
              &lt;block type="core/template" name="home_page_sections" template="page/homepage/sections.phtml"&gt;
                  &lt;block type="layout/carousel" name="featured_carousel"&gt;
                      &lt;action method="setData"&gt;
                          &lt;name&gt;filter_attribute&lt;/name&gt;
                          &lt;value&gt;is_featured_product&lt;/value&gt;
                      &lt;/action&gt;
                  &lt;/block&gt;
              &lt;/block&gt;
          &lt;/reference&gt;
      &lt;/page_homepage&gt;
  &lt;/layout&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But I am not getting the data on the other end in my controller:</p>
  
  <pre><code>class Foo_Layout_Block_Carousel extends Mage_Core_Block_Template
  {
      public function __construct() 
      {
          parent::__construct();
  
          $filterAttribute = $this-&gt;getFilterAttribute(); // Nothing
          $filterAttribute = $this-&gt;getData('filter_attribute'); // Nada
  
          // Alright, fine, what DO I have?!
          var_dump($this-&gt;getData()); // array(0) {} ... Argh!
      }
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>From all my searching I've found that this really should work, but since it does not, I have a feeling I'm missing something obvious. Here is my layout module's configuration (I'm using a single module to define a homepage and any other blocks I need for the site):</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;?xml version="1.0"?&gt;
  &lt;config&gt;
      &lt;modules&gt;
          &lt;Foo_Layout&gt;
              &lt;version&gt;0.1.0&lt;/version&gt;
          &lt;/Foo_Layout&gt;
      &lt;/modules&gt;
      &lt;global&gt;
          &lt;page&gt;
              &lt;layouts&gt;
                  &lt;foo_homepage translate="label"&gt;
                      &lt;label&gt;Homepage&lt;/label&gt;
                      &lt;template&gt;page/homepage.phtml&lt;/template&gt;
                      &lt;layout_handle&gt;page_homepage&lt;/layout_handle&gt;
                  &lt;/foo_homepage&gt;
              &lt;/layouts&gt;
          &lt;/page&gt;
          &lt;blocks&gt;
              &lt;layout&gt;
                  &lt;class&gt;Foo_Layout_Block&lt;/class&gt;
              &lt;/layout&gt;
          &lt;/blocks&gt;
      &lt;/global&gt;
  &lt;/config&gt;
  </code></pre>