Show products from inactive category

Question

Im using a code to get a product collection from a specific category, but if the category is inactive it returns empty to me.

Is there a way to retrieve the products even if the category is inactive?

Here is the code:

$category = new Mage_Catalog_Model_Category();
$category->load(111); //cat_id
$collection = $category->getProductCollection();
$collection->addAttributeToSelect('*');

It works fine on active categories.

Thanks,

Answer 1

Welcome to Magento.SE! A few things here:

Firstly:

Instead of doing this:

$category = new Mage_Catalog_Model_Category();
$category->load(111); //cat_id

Do this:

$category = Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->load(111);

The reason being is that you get the benefit of Magento's rewrite system - that way you know you're always using the registered rewrite.

Second:

Instead of loading the category and then loading products, rather load the product collection and filter by category association:

$category = Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->load(111);
$collection = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')
    ->getCollection()
    ->addCategoryFilter($category)
    ->addAttributeToSelect('*');

You could optimize this by filtering only by category id and not loading the category at all:

$categoryId = 35;
$collection = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')
    ->getCollection()
    ->addAttributeToSelect('*')
    ->addAttributeToFilter('category_ids',array('finset'=>$categoryId));