Why Can't I Load a Product by SKU using loadBySku()?

Question

Synopsis

I wanted to load a product by SKU there are many articles, blog posts, stack overflow results etc. All I want to know is - why does it have to be so difficult to load a product by a SKU?

// This method does not work (Of all, I expect this to work)
$product = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')->loadBySku($sku);

// These do not work either
$product = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')->loadByAttribute($sku, 'sku');
$product = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')->loadByAttribute('sku', $sku);

// This does not work
$product = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')->load($sku, 'sku');

Of course, I am expecting far too much from Magento at this point a simple way of doing something (simple is a concept Magento clearly is not familiar with)

// This works:
$product = Mage::getModel('catalog/product');
$product->load($product->getIdBySku($sku));

Answer 1

// This method does not work (Of all, I expect this to work)
$product = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')->loadBySku($sku);

This is because the method Mage_Catalog_Model_Product::loadBySku does not exist. There must be a method called loadBySku in the class Mage_Catalog_Model_Product for you to be able to use it, unless it's some magic method.

// These do not work either
$product->getModel('catalog/product')->loadByAttribute($sku, 'sku');
$product->getModel('catalog/product')->loadByAttribute('sku', $sku);

The above includes typos. It should be like below. You need to assign what Mage::getModel()->load() returns to $product before doing stuff with the product object.

$product = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')->loadByAttribute('sku', $sku);

Note that with loadByAttribute, you do not get related objects like the stock and media gallery. See Mage_Catalog_Model_Abstract::loadByAttribute for more info.

Answer 2

I tested execution time for the various methods I've seen to load a product by SKU. This is the most efficient:

$product = Mage::getModel('catalog/product');
$product->load($product->getIdBySku($data['sku']));

Tests:

$time_start = microtime();
$product1 = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')->loadByAttribute('sku', $data['sku']);
$time_end = microtime();
$time1 = $time_end - $time_start;

$time_start = microtime();
$product2 = Mage::getSingleton('catalog/product')->getCollection()
            ->addAttributeToFilter('sku', $data['sku'])
            ->addAttributeToSelect('*')
            ->getFirstItem();
        // do a full product load, otherwise you might get some errors related to stock item
        $product2->load($product2->getId());
$time_end = microtime();
$time2 = $time_end - $time_start;

$time_start = microtime();
$product3 = Mage::getModel('catalog/product');
$product3->load($product3->getIdBySku($data['sku']));
$time_end = microtime();
$time3 = $time_end - $time_start;

echo "<pre>time1: $time1\ntime2: $time2\ntime3: $time3</pre>";

Test results (in seconds):

time1: 0.024642
time2: 0.079715
time3: 0.007891

Answer 3

To load product by SKU in magento you can use the following code:

$_sku = 'leathershoes';
$_product = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')->loadByAttribute('sku',$_sku);
print $_product->getName(); // display product name

I used this everytime and it works perfectly. If you want to load multiple products, try this

$productSku = array('234', '267', '4523', 'Leather shoes', 'skin care'); // insert product SKU here
$attributes = Mage::getSingleton('catalog/config')->getProductAttributes();
$collection = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')
                ->getCollection()                
                ->addAttributeToFilter('sku', array('in' => $productSku))
                ->addAttributeToSelect($attributes);

Reference source http://magentoexplorer.com/how-load-product-by-sku-or-id-in-magento

Answer 4

As Already Discuss, This is because the method Mage_Catalog_Model_Product::loadBySku does not exist. There must be a method called loadBySku in the class Mage_Catalog_Model_Product for you to be able to use it.

You can also use loadByAttribute() methods to get the products details by sku.

    $sku  =  $this->getRequest()->getParam('SKU');
    $catalogMageObj = Mage::getModel('catalog/product');
    $products = $catalogMageObj->loadByAttribute('sku', $sku);

    // get the products details which you want
    $data = array(
    'id' => $products->getEntityId(),
    'sku' => $products->getSku(),
    'name' => $products->getName(),
    'attribute_set_id' => (int)$products->getAttributeSetId(),
    'price' => $products->getPrice(),
    'status' => $products->getStatus(),
    'visibility' => $products->getVisibility(),
    'type_id' => $products->getTypeId(),
    'created_at' => $products->getCreatedAt(),
    'updated_at' => $products->getUpdatedAt(),
    'product_links' => $productstypes, 
    'custom_attributes'  => $custom_attributes
);

// return the response as array
return $data;

You May also have a look on this article for more details. https://www.ipragmatech.com/ultimate-magento-developer-guide-get-product-details-using-restapi-magento-1-x/

Answer 5

Beware of $product = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')->loadByAttribute('sku', $sku);!
It may work 99% of the cases, but this will result in loading the attribute stock_item as Varien_Object instead of Mage_CatalogInventory_Model_Stock_Item so on methods like Mage_CatalogInventory_Model_Observer::checkQuoteItemQty it will call $stockItem instanceof Mage_CatalogInventory_Model_Stock_Item which would throw an exception!

So the best way is:

$product = Mage::getModel('catalog/product');
$product->setStoreId($storeId)->load($product->getIdBySku($sku));