Magento – How to get first product from category in 1column.phtml

categorycategory-attributemagento-1.9

I'm searching for a way to get the main image from the first (or random) product from the current category and use it as a background for the category title.

As the title is created in 1column.phtml (or 2columns-left.phtml, 2columns-right.phtml, 3columns.phtml), the code should work there. I've tried all different solutions from this post, but it just gives me errors.

According to the code in 1column.phtml I've tried to get something like this as a first step inside :

<header class="page-header">
    <div class="container">...</div>
</header>

<?php if (Mage::app()->getFrontController()->getRequest()->getControllerName() == 'category') : ?>
<h1 class="title"><?php echo $_category->name ?></h1>
<?php echo $_category->getProductCollection()->getFirstItem()->getName(); ?>
<?php endif; ?>

This was an attempt that doesn't give back errors, but has no output at all. I'm pretty sure there is a was, but I'm clueless how to call anything useful within 1column.phtml.

Best Answer

Please use registry variable for this case.

<?php if (Mage::app()->getFrontController()->getRequest()->getControllerName() == 'category') : 
    if ($_category = Mage::registry('current_category')) :
        $_helper    = Mage::helper('catalog/output');
?>
        <h1 class="title"><?php echo $_helper->categoryAttribute($_category, $_category->getName(), 'name') ?></h1>
        <?php echo $_category->getProductCollection()->getFirstItem()->getName(); ?>
    <?php endif; ?>
<?php endif ;?>

Related Solutions

Magento – How to get first item from product collection

To get the first item in a collection simply use the getFirstItem() function on the collection.

Example:

// this gets all the products
$productCollection = Mage::getResourceModel('catalog/products_collection');
// this line gets just the first product
$firstItem = $productCollection->getFirstItem();

Example 2 (for this particular question):

$_category  = $this->getCurrentCategory();
$_collection = $_category->getProductCollection();
$_product =  $_collection->getFirstItem(); // this will get first item in collection

Some other areas this can be used:

Customers

$customerCollection = Mage::getResourceModel('customer/customer_collection');
$firstCustomer = $customerCollection->getFirstItem();

Orders

$orderCollection = Mage::getResourceModel('sales/order_collection');
$firstOrder = $orderCollection->getFirstItem();

Please Note:

Its not a good idea to load ALL the products/customers/orders for this takes a lot of resources. The preferred way is to limit what you want to load by using the addAttributeToFilter() or addFieldToFilter() functions, see example below:

$productCollection = Mage::getResourceModel('catalog/product_collection')
                           ->addAttributeToFilter('sku', 'book123`);

Magento – How to Use Category Heading Instead of Category Name

If you are referring to the category title, you can get it like this:

echo $_helper->categoryAttribute($_category, $_category->getMetaTitle(), 'meta_title');

If there is a custom field category header, do like this:

Mage::log(print_r($_category->debug(), true), null, 'category.log', true);

and then go to var/log/category.log and you will find there all the info you need.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Magento – How to get first item from product collection

Magento – How to Use Category Heading Instead of Category Name

Related Topic