Category Image

sscheidegger · October 28, 2011, 09:46:40 AM

Hi everybody

I'm using an output override to change the look of the category view. My goal is to display on top the category image and description and then below list the products of that category. Everything works fine apart from the category image. I tried many things, but I didn't manage to fetch the category image! (The one which is shown as a thumbnail in the parent category or the categories view!)

I display the category description using

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echo $this->category->category_description;
I thought it would be straight forward to use

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echo $this->category->images[0]->displayMediaThumb(''); for the image. However, this doesn't work. I found out that there are no images in $this->category...

Does anybody know how to do this? I imagine sth. like going to the parent of the category and then to the correct child and fetch the image. Or even starting from the root and parsing all categories until I find the correct one and fetch it's image?

Greets Stefan

PRO · November 01, 2011, 16:18:02 PM

<?php echo $category->images[0]->displayMediaThumb("",false); ?>

HAVE you looked around in the view files?

sscheidegger · November 01, 2011, 17:48:37 PM

$category is used to list the subcategories:

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foreach ( $this->category->children as $category ) {...}

So, I'm trying to achieve what is very easy for the subcategories (or the products of the category), just for the current category. Either it's very simple and I just don't see it for some reason, or the structure doesn't allow to easily access the images of the current category??? I checked the various views (categories, category, productdetails), but the straight forward solution doesn't work...

PRO · November 01, 2011, 18:25:53 PM

try this

<?php echo $this->category->file_url_thumb ?>

That might not be right,
BUT you will be able to use file_url_thumb easier.

sscheidegger · November 02, 2011, 16:09:49 PM

Thanks for the hint. Unfortunately, there is also no $this->category->file_url_thumb as well as there is no $this->category->image[0]... I'm starting to think if this thread should go to bug reports!

For analysing what information is available, I inserted the following line somewhere on top of category/default.php: <?php print_r($this->category); ?> To explain the problem, I'm adding it's output for two different pages:

In VM FE I go to the category view of the "Power Tools" (example data). This category has two child categories: "Outdoor Tools" and "Indoor Tools". In the output of print_r I see all the information for the images of these two child categories. However I don't find the information for the image of "Power Tools"!

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Further I go to the category view of "Indoor Tools". It doesn't have any subcategories, but one product ("Drill"). Here the output of print_r($this->category) doesn't contain any image information! (The product images are in $this->products.)

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In the end I analysed the output of print_r($this) and didn't find the category image information. So I conclude that

either the information is not stored int $this but somewhere else and I don't know where
or the information is not available (bug? not intended?)
or there is something in $this which I missed!

Anybody an idea, what might be the correct conclusion?

PRO · November 02, 2011, 16:30:16 PM

try this

<?php echo $this->category->images[0]->file_url_thumb; ?>

sscheidegger · November 03, 2011, 08:30:59 AM

$this->category->images[...] is not defined, as you can see in the above output of print_r(). Therefore echo $this->category->images[0]->file_url_thumb; returns and empty string.

Movs · January 12, 2012, 12:13:43 PM

In category or categories view (/components/com_virtuemart/views/category>view.html.php) you should add after line $category = $categoryModel->getCategory($categoryId);
this string:
$categoryModel->addImages($category);

Then you can access a category image in your template^ $this->category->images[0]->file_url_thumb

The bast way is to use like this
if ($this->category->virtuemart_media_id) echo $this->category->images[0]->displayMediaFull("", false);

scotous · February 21, 2012, 23:11:26 PM

I can confirm that the solution provided by @Movs did work but only for the 1st VM2.

I cant get it working in VM2 2.0.1h
havent tried at 2.0.1n yet...

any clues?

It does work in VM2 2.0.1h i had a problem with my core files... works in all vm2

sscheidegger · April 20, 2012, 15:42:10 PM

Has been fixed in VM 2.0.6.

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Category Image