How to render custom blocks in product general description field

Question

I've created a template in template/catalog/product/view/ which displays a products image, title, sku and view info button. I've done this so that I can add suggested items into my 'description' area on the product detail page.

The template looks like this

<?php
$productId = $this->getProduct_id();
$_product = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')->load($productId); //load the product
?>

<div><a href="<?php echo $_product->getProductUrl() ?>"><img style="float: left; margin-right: 10px;" src="<?php echo Mage::helper('catalog/image')->init($_product, 'thumbnail')->resize(200, 200); ?>" alt="<?php echo $this->htmlEscape($_product['name']); ?>" border="0" width="200" /></a>

<p style="float: left; line-height: 24px;"><a style="color: #00a1b1; font-weight: bold; font-size: 15px; margin-bottom: 5px;" href="<?php echo $_product->getProductUrl() ?>"><?php echo $this->stripTags($_product->getName(), null, true) ?></a><br />

<span style="color: #ea1d25; font-weight: bold; font-size: 17px; margin-right: 10px;"><?php echo $_formattedSpecialPrice = Mage::helper('core')->currency($_product->getFinalPrice(),true,false); ?></span> <a href="<?php echo $_product->getProductUrl() ?>"><button type="button" title="view Info" class="button btn-cart"><span><span>View Info</span></span></button></a><br />

Item / SKU: <?php echo $_product->getSku(); ?><br />

<a href="<?php echo $_product->getProductUrl() ?>">Learn More</a></p>
</div>

The shortcode that I use to display looks like this

{{block type="catalog/product_new" product_id="40506" template="catalog/product/view/fap-recommended-product.phtml"}}

It works great on CMS pages

BUT

I cannot use this shortcode in my (product > general > description) field. The output on the front end just displays the short code =( I've looked everywhere online but no one can explain my exact scenario here. Someone please help??

Please note that I do not want to utilize Static Blocks. I am doing this as a short code in the product description and it has to be dynamic in this manner. because we have 100000s of products that are importing from netsuite and i want to be able to import these shortcodes from my descriptions in netsuite.

Answer 1

I have found the answer to this.

I've added the following method to my product model (created a local over ride model)

created file: app/code/local/Mage/Catalog/Model/Product.php

added method

function getDescription(){
$processor = Mage::getModel('core/email_template_filter');
$html = $processor->filter($this->getData('description'));
return $html;
}