How to retrieve a limited number of products from the catalog?

Question

I am trying to retrieve a limited number (three) of products from the catalog. Here's my (not working) code:

$products = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')->getCollection();
$products->addAttributeToSelect('*');
$products->getSelect()->order('rand()');
$products->getSelect()->limit(3);

foreach ($products as $product) {
    // Do stuff with $product
}

The problem is I am getting sometimes only one product and sometimes no products. Although I have more than three products in the catalog.

Edit:

Here is the query computed by $products->getSelect();:

SELECT `e`.* FROM `miiny_catalog_product_entity` AS `e` ORDER BY rand() ASC LIMIT 3

I'm using Magento 1.9.2.4.

Thanks in advance.

Louis.

Answer 1

try this code

$productsCollection = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')->getCollection();
$productsCollection
         ->addAttributeToSelect('*');
$productsCollection
         ->getSelect()
         ->order('rand()');
$products = $productsCollection
         ->setPageSize(3)
         ->setCurPage(1)
         ->load();

what you recive error? try look log

tailf -100 var/log/system.log

tailf -100 var/log/exception.log

in magento for get more information, about error.

and you can enable error for display on develop server by local.xml in directory errors.

cp errors/local.xml.simple errors/local.xml