My local copy of portal::element::get_id returns an intelligent error message if there's no portlet or more than one portlet that matches the search criteria. I'll be committing this soon.
As far as having get_id create a portlet if one doesn't exist, that's what the old new-portal code did. As it happens, .LRN depends on it heavily because various applet operations are called at times with no portlet created and at other times with the portlet created.
Personally I think that's gross, and rather than writing get_id to magically create portlets as a side-effect, I intend to make .LRN always create needed portlets before calling the related applet routines rather than do so sometimes and not others.
