Magento create configurable product BUT without child products data

Question

I checked some existing questions, but none of them explains how to create configurable products without child products data. I don't need to link products, I just need to create configurable product for later use.

So I tried that:

$_prod->setTypeId('configurable');  
$_prod->setConfigurableAttributes('color');

But this is not working. When I click in admin on product, the product is created, but I need to choose first configurable attributes. So setConfigurableAttributes didn't make any action, but it also didn't invoke any error. What is the proper way for that?

Answer 1

I ended up with the below raw query:

$colorAttrId = 92;
$tableName = Mage::getSingleton('core/resource')->getTableName('catalog_product_super_attribute');
$write = Mage::getSingleton('core/resource')->getConnection('core_write');
$write->query("INSERT IGNORE INTO $tableName (`product_id`, `attribute_id`) VALUES ($prodId,$colorAttrId)");