[SOLVED] Custom product catalog page not working after upgrade to 3.8.2

[aroussos]

Hi All,

We have a Joomla! menu (Menu Item Type: URL) called "Pricelist", pointing to the URL index.php?option=com_virtuemart&view=virtuemart&virtuemart_category_id=0.
Clicking on the "Pricelist" menu item loads a custom PHP file (templates/protostar-imp/html/com_virtuemart/virtuemart/default.php) and displays a single, long page with all items available at our bookstore (grouped by VM Product Category), for easy ordering by our customers. To see what it looks like, please see here.
We are currently on Joomla! 3.9.19 and VirtueMart 3.6.10.10211, and the custom menu item works fine.

However, following an upgrade (in a Virtual Machine, for development/testing purposes) to what was at the time the latest VirtueMart version (3.8.2.10325), we noticed that our custom product catalog/pricelist page stopped working:
what you get now is a page that appears very similar to a VM shop's top-level view of product category names, followed by a paginated list of our products (in two columns) -- it looks like this screenshot.

Even if we upgrade our test Virtual Machine to the latest Joomla! (3.9.20) and VirtueMart (3.8.4.10335) versions, the problem persists.

One thing I noticed is that our custom menu works partially (it displays products that exists in subcategories, but not in top-level categories) if I disable SEF URLs in Joomla!'s Global Configuration.
However, that's not really an option for us as we would like to keep SEF URLs enabled on our site.

So, my question is: has there been some fundamental change in the VirtueMart codebase recently that would render our custom product catalog page inoperable?

Thank you very much for your time.

[AH]

Have you looked at your category settings - they may be new functionality between versions

[Studio 42]

HI,
i think that you dont used template overide, but modifed core files.
You should try to copy the file
/components/com_virtuemart/views/virtuemart/tmpl/default.php
in your template
templates/YOURTEMPLATE/html/virtuemart/default.php
to see if it work right
If you have hacked another file in the virtuemart core, then you have to save it so you can get the code to display your list correctly.

[pinochico]

Custom develop.

Contact your developer or programmer I think this issues you are not fixed by forum, because you changed core VM files.
We have the same type of menu - all pructs from subcategories on one page for our wholesalers and we must changed models and routers and some few files

[aroussos]

Thank you all for your feedback and suggestions.

Eventually, we managed to resolve this by:
1) assigning one of the VirtueMart menu item types not currently in use ("View vendor TOS" to be more specific) to our Joomla! menu
2) overriding components/com_virtuemart/views/vendor/tmpl/tos.php (templates/OURTEMPLATE/html/com_virtuemart/vendor/tos.php now contains the code for the product catalog)
3) creating language overrides for COM_VIRTUEMART_VENDOR_TOS so that the desired page title would appear in the browser window/tab