Hide empty category (and children) with no products

Question

I have a sidebar in the homepage which displays all categories and I want to hide all categories and subcategories that are blank.

I'm using version 1.9.2 and tried Prattski but somehow it's not working. The module doesn't geshow.

Answer 1

Well you need to check if the category/subcategory has products directly from category collection.

You can override Mage_Catalog_Model_Category in local codePool or in a custom module.

Add a new method hasProducts in overrided Model file like below:

public function hasProducts() {
        //$products = Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->load($category_id)
        $products = $this
            ->getProductCollection()
            ->addAttributeToSelect('entity_id')
            ->addAttributeToFilter('status', 1)
            ->addAttributeToFilter('visibility', 4);
        return ( $products->count() > 0 )  ? true : false;
    }

Sample script(put in your site root folder) depicting, how to use above function:

<?php
$magePath = 'app/Mage.php';
require_once $magePath;
Varien_Profiler::enable();
Mage::setIsDeveloperMode(true);
ini_set('display_errors', 1);
umask(0);
Mage::app();

$categories = Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->getCollection();
foreach($categories as $category):
    if($category->hasProducts()) $catIds[] = $category->getId();
endforeach;

echo "<pre/>";print_r($catIds);die;

Refer below links to check how to override Models: http://nickbartlett.com/override-the-magento-category-model-and-resource-model/

http://magedev.com/magento-overriding-model-block-or-helper/