Question

I have created a custom category attribute.
Now i need to access it’s value in the _getHtml() function from Topmenu.php.

Can anyone tell me how to do this?:)

Any help is appreciated 🙂

Answer 1

You won’t be able to get that kind of data inside the TopMenu block, unless you make some changes.

The Navigation is built up using a generic tree structure which doesn’t have an concept of what a category is, however this is built up elsewhere using the categories.

If you look inside Topmenu.php you will see where the Navigation is built up:

Mage::dispatchEvent('page_block_html_topmenu_gethtml_before', array(
    'menu' => $this->_menu
));

This will fire off an event, which has an observer attached which will build up the navigation items for us, which happens to be:

Model: Mage_Catalog_Model_Observer
Method: _addCategoriesToMenu()

You can then add your new attribute into the Node data, which will then be available inside Topmenu.php

Example:

$categoryData = array(
    'name' => $category->getName(),
    'id' => $nodeId,
    'url' => Mage::helper('catalog/category')->getCategoryUrl($category),
    'is_active' => $this->_isActiveMenuCategory($category),
    'my_attribute' => $category->getData('my_attribute') // Add our data in...
);

You should then be able to use this inside Topmenu::_getHtml()

echo $child->getData('my_attribute');