Magento CE 1.9.0.1 – Why Attributes of Bundle Items Are Saved to the Bundle Product Itself?

bundle-productce-1.9.0.1databaseeav

Recently I was studying how the options of the layered navigation filter on the category page are determined and retrieved. I have dug a bit into the models and database for it, and there I found the following mechanism which I do not understand:

Situation:
Say, I have an attribute named color (attribute_id = 133), a simple product A (entity_id = 26), and a bundled product B (entity_id = 27), and A is added to B as its bundle item, in Magento ver. 1.9.0.1.

Step 1: color is not set for both A and B

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Step 2: color is set as Black (value_id = 19) for B

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Step 3: color is set as White (value_id = 18) for A

enter image description here

From step 3, we could see that apparently attributes of the bundle items (A in this case) are also saved as if they are the attributes of the bundle product (B in this case) itself. And I believe that this is why the attributes of the bundle items of bundle products also appear in the layered navigation filter.

I would like to ask why is it designed this way? Why would the system save attributes of the children products to the parent product as well? How does it help in any specific process in the system?

Thanks in advance.

Best Answer

It is the same way with configurable products.

If you are looking for white shoes and the configurable products solves this problem for you, the product is offered. I think it is easy as this. So if your searched product is part of a bundle product, this product is offered too.

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Magento – Check if all bundle items are available

You can use the following code to check whether the required child items of a bundle product are salable.

$isSalable = true;
$bundleProductId = 447;

$bundleProduct = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')->load($bundleProductId);
$childrenIds = $bundleProduct->getTypeInstance(true)
    ->getChildrenIds($bundleProduct->getId(), true); // set second parameter to false to get not only required items
$childCollection = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')->getCollection()
    ->addFieldToFilter('entity_id', $childrenIds);

foreach ($childCollection as $child) {
    if (!$child->isSalable()) {
        $isSalable = false;
    }
}

After that you can use the variable $isSalable to decide whether the product is salable or not.

EDITED

In this case will be better to rewrite the class "Mage_Bundle_Model_Product_Type" and rewrite the method "Mage_Bundle_Model_Product_Type::isSalable". If you have your custom module you can do it as described below. To rewrite the class edit the file "app/code/community/Namespace/Module/etc/config.xml":

<config>
<modules>
    ...
</modules>
<global>
    <models>
        <bundle>
            <rewrite>
                <product_type>Namespace_Module_Model_Product_Type</product_type>
            </rewrite>
        </bundle>
    </models>
    ....

Then create the file: "app/code/community/Namespace/Module/Model/Product/Type.php" and insert the following code:

<?php
class Namespace_Module_Model_Product_Type extends Mage_Bundle_Model_Product_Type
{
    public function isSalable($product = null)
    {
        $salable = parent::isSalable($product);

        $childrenIds = $this->getChildrenIds($this->getProduct($product)->getId(), true); // set second parameter to false to get not only required items
        $childCollection = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')->getCollection()
            ->addFieldToFilter('entity_id', $childrenIds);

        foreach ($childCollection as $child) {
            if (!$child->isSalable()) {
                $salable = false;
                break;
            }
        }

        return $salable;
    }
}

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