Sometimes you have the need to add some custom attributes to a category in Magento. This is actually very simple to implement. In this article I’ll assume that you already know how to build a Magento module. Therefore I will not explain the whole ‘how to create a Magento module’-part, since there are already enough articles out there that cover that topic. Instead, I’ll just show you the most basic way on how to add custom attributes to a category in Magento.
Configuration
Make sure your module has a setup script, if you don’t know how to do this, here’s a simple layout. The following code should be placed inside your <global> -block in your config.xml :
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<resources> <mymodule_setup> <setup> <module>Mypackage_Mymodule</module> <class>Mage_Catalog_Model_Resource_Setup</class> </setup> <connection> <use>core_setup</use> </connection> </mymodule_setup> <mymodule_read> <connection> <use>core_read</use> </connection> </mymodule_read> <mymodule_write> <connection> <use>core_write</use> </connection> </mymodule_write> </resources> |
The above script simple makes sure your module will be able to execute a setup-script. Which we will place in our module. The path and filename to this file must be sql/mymodule_setup/mysql4-install-0.0.1.php (assumimg your modules’ namespace is mymodule and your version is 0.0.1). The following code should be placed inside this script:
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$this->startSetup(); $this->addAttribute( Mage_Catalog_Model_Category::ENTITY, 'my_custom_attribute', array( 'group' => 'My custom group', 'input' => 'text', 'type' => 'text', 'label' => 'My custom attribute', 'backend' => '', 'visible' => true, 'required' => false, 'visible_on_front' => false, 'global' => Mage_Catalog_Model_Resource_Eav_Attribute::SCOPE_GLOBAL, ) ); $this->endSetup(); |
That’s it! Now you’ll have an extra tab on your ‘edit category’-page which allows you to save an extra attribute. This is the most basic example.
Going beyond basic
You might have noticed 2 things in this example: input and type :
- Input determines the type of input element to show. This can be a lot of things, like text, textarea, date, file, etc. To get an idea of what’s possible, you should check out the /lib/Varien/Data/Form/Element -folder.
- Type determines the EAV-table in which the value of this input element is stored. This can be datetime, decimal, int, text or varchar.
Using select box dropdowns
At some point you might want to be able to have a dropdown with options when editing a category. Again, this is really easy to do by using a select -inputtype and a source model:
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$this->startSetup(); $this->addAttribute( Mage_Catalog_Model_Category::ENTITY, 'my_custom_dropdown', array( 'group' => 'My custom group', 'input' => 'select', 'type' => 'int', 'label' => 'My custom dropdown', 'backend' => '', 'visible' => true, 'required' => false, 'visible_on_front' => false, 'global' => Mage_Catalog_Model_Resource_Eav_Attribute::SCOPE_GLOBAL, 'source' => 'mymodel/source_custom', ) ); $this->endSetup(); |
Notice that we changed ‘input’ to ‘select’, ‘type’ to ‘int’ and added an extra item: ‘source’. What ‘source’ does, is load a Magento Model and invoke the getAllOptions() -method on it. So, needless to say, we need to add a new model in Model/Source/Custom.php with the following code:
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class Mypackage_Mymodule_Model_Source_Custom extends Mage_Eav_Model_Entity_Attribute_Source_Abstract { public function getAllOptions() { $options = array( 1 => 'One', 2 => 'Two', 3 => 'Three' ); return $options; } } |
This source model returns a simple array where the key is the value that is stored in the database, and the value the text that is displayed in the dropdown.
So that’s it! Now you are able to add custom attributes to categories.
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