Question

I want the grid in admin to be displayed in frontend.
The grid that shows the list of products in admin-> catalog->manage products.

I want to show this on the frontend for each category?

What would be ideal approach to get this done?

Answer 1

You need to rewrite blocks

Mage_Adminhtml_Block_Catalog_Product_Grid
Mage_Adminhtml_Block_Widget_Container

to your own, because in this classes we have logic for editing, adding products.

also you need to redefine

adminhtml/default/default/template/catalog/product.phtml
adminhtml/default/default/template/widget/grid.phtml

and add templates to the frontend scope with your customizations.

add to the frontend catalog.xml blocks declaration for catalog_category_default node
it might be like this:

<catalog_category_default>
    <reference name="content">
        <block name="module_name/catalog_product_grid" template="module_name/catalog_product_grid.phtml" output="toHtml />
    </reference>
</catalog_category_default>