Show Deactivated/Disabled Products in Comparison View in Magento 1.8

comparemagento-1.8

I am trying to show a product in comparison view, which is set as status = disabled through admin panel.

In default magento, this seems not possible as the disabled products are not visible in product listing page as well as product details page.

Somehow, I managed to show the disabled products in product listing page and product details page by overriding Mage_Catalog_Helper_Product. In that I commented the following code:

    // if (!$this->canShow($product)) {
    //     return false;
    // }

Now, please someone help me on how to show up the disabled product even in comparison view?

Best Answer

After searching for a long time and failing to extract a solution from mage core files, I created an attribute which does the same as status attribute. I named that attribute as Archive (Yes/No). This new attribute will justify whether a product is discontinued or not.

Atlast, I filter all my product listing, product details and home page related to this new attribute Archive only.

I am planning to write a MVC action, which will change all the products status as enabled and at the same time triggering the Archive as yes for the status = disabled products. I will share the code here soon.

Related Solutions

Magento 1.8 – How to Sort Product Array on Checkout Page by Mother-Category IDs

Here is what I ended up with, which is very simple and maybe also very inefficient coding wise, but it works:

1st off I fetched the items in the Cart:

$session= Mage::getSingleton('checkout/session');    
$items = $session->getQuote()->getAllItems();

Then I initiated an Array:

$ArrayOfItems = array();

Then I looped through the Cart items and stored a delimited string into the Array:

foreach($items as $item) {
$productID = $item->getId();
$_product = $item->getProduct();
$productName = $item->getName();
$itemquantity = $item->getQty();
$_priceIncludingTax = Mage::helper('tax')->getPrice($_product, $_product->getFinalPrice());
$productURL = $_product->getUrlInStore();
$itemsubtotal = $itemquantity * $_priceIncludingTax;


//Getting the Products Category IDs and fetching the name and ID of the mother-category and the last category
$categories_array = $item->getProduct()->getCategoryIds();
$categories_array_end = end($categories_array);    
$catscounter = 0;
foreach($categories_array as $categoryId) {
$catscounter = $catscounter + 1;
if ($catscounter > 1) { 
break; 
}
$category = Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->load($categoryId);
$catidindex = $categoryId;
$catname = $category->getName(); 
}

//Collecting Array
$ArrayOfItems[] = $catname.'|'.$productName.'|'.$productID.'|'.$itemquantity.'|'.$itemsubtotal.'|'.$catidindex.'|'.$categories_array_end.'|'.$productURL;
}

Now I sorted the Array:

sort($ArrayOfItems);

(This way the Array is sorted by the Category Name of the products mother-category and then by the product name and so on..)

Then finally I looped through the sorted array:

foreach($ArrayOfItems as $ArrayItem) {

$arrayString = explode('|', $ArrayItem);

$catname = $arrayString[0];
$productNameFinal = $arrayString[1];
$productIDfinal = $arrayString[2];
$itemquantity = $arrayString[3];
$itemsubtotal = $arrayString[4];
$categoryId = $arrayString[5];
$categoryIdEnd = $arrayString[6];
$ProductURL = $arrayString[7];
}

Feel free to comment on this, especially if I´m doing something very "stupid" or "Bad" here..

As a side note I must mention that I´m used to working in Joomla, calling out all the "facepalms" :), where I make most of my custom shopping scripts based on this kind of PHP loops and arrays. And I´m sure that this can be done much simpler in Magento as shown by ProxiBlue

Magento 1.8 – How to Show Featured Products from a Specific Category

Source: https://stackoverflow.com/a/12288000/158325

Found a working solution using Alan Storm's advice.

/template/custom/featured-product.phtml

<?php
$_categoryId = $this->getCategoryId();

$_productCollection = Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->load($_categoryId)
    ->getProductCollection()
    ->addAttributeToSelect('*')
    ->addAttributeToFilter('status', 1)
    ->addAttributeToFilter('visibility', 4)
    ->setOrder('price', 'ASC');
?>

<div class="featured-product">
    <h2><?php echo $this->__( $this->getLabel() ); ?></h2>

    <?php foreach ($_productCollection as $_product): ?>
        <div class="item">
            <a class="product-image" href="<?php echo $_product->getProductUrl() ?>">
                <img src="<?php echo $this->helper('catalog/image')->init($_product, 'small_image')->resize(200); ?>" alt="<?php echo $this->htmlEscape($this->getImageLabel($_product, 'small_image')) ?>" />
            </a>

            <a class="product-name" href="<?php echo $_product->getProductUrl() ?>"><?php echo $this->htmlEscape($_product->getName()) ?></a>

            <?php echo $this->getPriceHtml($_product, true) ?>
        </div>

        <?php
        // Note: Exit after first product.
        break;
        ?>
    <?php endforeach ?>
</div>

In short, the collection is manually generated rather than receiving a collection (as my initial attempt did):

<?php $_productCollection = $this->getLoadedProductCollection() ?>
<?php $_collectionSize = $_productCollection->getSize(); ?>

Using in a CMS Page:

{{block type="core/template" category_id="13" label="Product of the Month" template="custom/featured-product.phtml" }}

Using in a template:

/layout/local.xml

<default>
    <reference name="footer">
        <block type="core/template" name="custom.featuredProduct" as="featured_product" template="custom/featured-product.phtml">
            <action method="setData"><key>category_id</key><value>13</value></action>
            <action method="setData"><key>label</key><value>Product of the Month</value></action>
        </block>
    </reference>
</default>

/template/page/html/footer.phtml

<?php echo $this->getChildHtml('featured_product') ?>

Helpful resources:

How to get a product collection:

Using magic getters/setters: