title: Passing variable to Magento widget
body: <p>I'm trying to pass a variable using setData to a box containing a widget with this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>$this-&gt;getChild('my_box')-&gt;setData('myvar', '123');
  echo $this-&gt;getChildHtml('my_box');
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>or this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>echo $this-&gt;getChild('my_box')-&gt;setData('myvar', '123')-&gt;toHtml();
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The "my_box" is the block linked with the widget, it's positioned in the footer and defined in local.xml:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;reference name="footer"&gt;
      &lt;block type="core/text_list" name="my_box" as="my_box" translate="label"&gt;
          &lt;label&gt;My Box&lt;/label&gt;
      &lt;/block&gt;
  &lt;/reference&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But if I try to retrieve the value in the widget with any of these methods:</p>
  
  <pre><code>echo $this-&gt;getData('myvar');
  echo $this-&gt;getMyVar();
  echo $this-&gt;myvar;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>there is no return value, any suggestion?</p>