Collection – Display Four Random Products on Homepage

cmscollection;product-collectionproduct-listrandom

I'm trying to get 4 random products on the homepage using PHP within a TPL file I've created. I'd like to be able to format the products in a foreach loop as I'm using some formatting in the code seen below…

<div class="three columns">
  <div class="product_container no_border">
    <div class="product">
      <a href="product_page.html"><img src="<?php echo $this->getSkinUrl('images/products/place_holder.jpg'); ?>" alt=" "></a>
    </div>

    <div class="product_title">
      <a href="product_page.html">240 Serving Package</a>
    </div>

    <div class="price_hp">$454.99</div>

    <div class="free_shipping">
      <div class="fs"></div>
      Free shipping for this package
    </div>

    <div class="shop_btn">
      <a href="#">ADD TO CART</a>
    </div>
  </div>
</div>

I've tried a few things found on Google but no luck yet. Setting categories in an array would certainly work for what I'm trying to do but it'd also work if the categories were random.

Thanks!

Best Answer

Try this. I worked for me:

$products = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')->getCollection();
$products->addAttributeToSelect(array('name', 'thumbnail', 'price')); //feel free to add any other attribues you need.
Mage::getSingleton('catalog/product_status')->addVisibleFilterToCollection($products);
Mage::getSingleton('catalog/product_visibility')->addVisibleInCatalogFilterToCollection($products); 
$products->getSelect()->order('RAND()');
$products->getSelect()->limit(4);
foreach ($products as $product)  : ?>

<div class="three columns">
  <div class="product_container no_border">
    <div class="product">
      <a href="<?php echo $product->getProductUrl()?>"><img src="<?php echo Mage::helper('catalog/image')->init($product, 'thumbnail')->resize(100, 80)?>" alt=""></a>
    </div>

    <div class="product_title">
      <a href="<?php echo $product->getProductUrl()?>"><?php echo $product->getName()?></a>
    </div>

    <div class="price_hp"><?php echo Mage::app()->getStore()->getCurrentCurrency()->format($product->getFinalPrice());?></div>

    <div class="free_shipping">
      <div class="fs"></div>
      Free shipping for this package
    </div>

    <div class="shop_btn">
      <a href="<?php echo Mage::helper('checkout/cart')->getAddUrl($product)?>">ADD TO CART</a>
    </div>
  </div>
</div>
<?php 
endforeach;?>

Related Solutions

Magento – Random products in product widget

The are two obvious approaches to achieve this. You can do it either within your theme or create a module that will utilise this functionality.

Within the theme you can just create a template (let's say in catalog/product/randomize.phtml) and put the following code in there:

$_category = Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->load($this->getCategoryId());
$productVisibility = Mage::getSingleton('catalog/product_visibility');
$_productCollection = Mage::getResourceModel('reports/product_collection')
                   ->addAttributeToSelect('*')
                   ->addStoreFilter()
                   ->addCategoryFilter($_category)
                   ->setVisibility($productVisibility->getVisibleInCatalogIds());
$_productCollection->getSelect()->order(new Zend_Db_Expr('RAND()'));                  
$_productCollection->setPage(1, 4);

and then in your CMS page you put something like this:

{{block type="core/template" name="whatever" template="catalog/product/randomize.phtml" category_id="YOUR_CATEGORY_ID"}}

The second approach is to create your module with just one block, extend Mage_Catalog_Block_Product_List and then implement _getProductCollection method in almost the same manner as in first approach:

protected function _getProductCollection()
{
    if (is_null($this->_productCollection)) {
        $_category = Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->load($this->getCategoryId());
        $productVisibility = Mage::getSingleton('catalog/product_visibility');
        $this->_productCollection = Mage::getResourceModel('reports/product_collection');
        $this->_productCollection->addAttributeToSelect('*')
            ->addStoreFilter()
            ->addCategoryFilter($_category)
            ->setVisibility($productVisibility->getVisibleInCatalogIds());
        $this->_productCollection->getSelect()->order(new Zend_Db_Expr('RAND()'));                  
        $this->_productCollection->setPage(1, 4);
    }

    return parent::_getProductCollection();
}

Then in your CMS page you can call your block like this:

{{block type="module_name/block_name" name="whatever" template="catalog/product/list.phtml" category_id="YOUR_CATEGORY_ID"}}

Magento – Display Random Products from Same Category with Parent Category Fill Up

I recently implemented something very similar and will share the relevant code below. But first some comments about performance, since that was the question:

General thoughts on performance for your requirements:

"they shouldn't be in cart" means, you have only limited means to cache the upsell block. I strongly recommend to do it anyway, but set cache key and cache lifetime only if the cart is empty.
Don't ORDER BY RAND() because it results in a resource intensive temp table copy. It has to load all results into a temporary table, assign a random number to each row and then sort without any index. Instead we retrieve all candidate ids (this is faster and the amount of data is managable even for large catalogs), pick some randomly and retrieve these rows directly. You can read about it in detail in my blog: http://www.schmengler-se.de/en/2015/09/show-random-products-in-magento-you-are-doing-it-wrong/

Specific performance problems with your solution

Don't use addAttributeToSelect('*') with EAV collections, only select what you need
Not entirely sure, but I doubt that new Zend_Db_Expr('FIELD(category_id, ' . implode(',', $_cat_order).')')) can efficiently use the MySQL indexes

Complete Solution

This is an observer for the catalog_product_upsell event. It uses the product collection provided by the product's category because I didn't need to fall back to the parent, but I'm sure you can adjust it.

use Mage_Catalog_Model_Product as Product;
use Mage_Catalog_Model_Product_Link as RelatedProduct;
use Mage_Catalog_Model_Resource_Product_Link_Product_Collection as RelatedProductCollection;

class IntegerNet_AutoUpsell_Model_Observer
{
    /**
     * @see event catalog_product_upsell
     * @param Varien_Event_Observer $observer
     * @throws Mage_Core_Exception
     */
    public function fillUpsellCollection(Varien_Event_Observer $observer)
    {
        $collection = $observer->getCollection();
        if ($collection instanceof RelatedProductCollection
            && $collection->getLinkModel()->getLinkTypeId() === RelatedProduct::LINK_TYPE_UPSELL
            && $collection->count() < $observer->getLimit('upsell')
        ) {
            $this->addItemsFromCategory($collection, $observer->getLimit('upsell') - $collection->count(), $observer->getProduct());
        }
    }
    protected function addItemsFromCategory(RelatedProductCollection $collection, $numberOfItems, Product $product)
    {
        /** @var Mage_Catalog_Model_Resource_Product_Collection $productsToAdd */
        $productsToAdd = $this->_getProductCategory($product)->getProductCollection();
        $productsToAdd
            ->addStoreFilter()
            ->addIdFilter(array_merge([$product->getId()], $collection->getAllIds()), true)
            ->setVisibility(Mage::getSingleton('catalog/product_visibility')->getVisibleInCatalogIds());

        $candidateIds = $productsToAdd->getAllIds();
        $choosenIds = [];
        $maxKey = count($candidateIds)-1;
        while (count($choosenIds) < $numberOfItems)) {
            $randomKey = mt_rand(0, $maxKey);
            $choosenIds[$randomKey] = $candidateIds[$randomKey];
        }    
        $productsToAdd
            ->addIdFilter($choosenIds)
            ->addMinimalPrice()
            ->addFinalPrice()
            ->addTaxPercents()
            ->addAttributeToSelect(Mage::getSingleton('catalog/config')->getProductAttributes())
            ->addUrlRewrite();
        foreach ($productsToAdd as $product) {
            $collection->addItem($product);
        }
    }

    /**
     * @param Mage_Catalog_Model_Product $product
     * @return Mage_Catalog_Model_Category
     */
    protected function _getProductCategory(Product $product)
    {
        $category = $product->getCategoryCollection()
            ->setPageSize(1)
            ->getFirstItem();
        return $category;
    }
}

Some parts that I'd like to highlight:

->addIdFilter(array_merge($product->getId(), $collection->getAllIds()), true)

This excludes the product itself and the products that are already manually defined as upsell products (I leave them and only fill the blanks with random products)

->addMinimalPrice()
->addFinalPrice()
->addTaxPercents()
->addAttributeToSelect(Mage::getSingleton('catalog/config')->getProductAttributes())
->addUrlRewrite();

This prepares the product collection to load the necessary data to display prices, the product link and any attributes configured as "used in product listing", but not more.