I have a unique situation being thrown at me here.
I have a product which in every way is a standard Magento catalog product. Has an entity id, sku, attributes the whole works.
None of this can change.
However, the powers that be would like any users hitting this product's request_path to go to another url, not the standard catalog/product/view target_path.
I've tried accomplishing this via the Url Rewrite Management panel, but Magento will not allow it since (if I select Product Rewrite) it locks the catalog/product/view in the target_path input field, or (if I select Custom) it will throw a duplicate record error if I try to direct the current request_path to the new target_path.
Is there any way to specify a custom target_path for a catalog product that does not follow the standard catalog/product/view/id/#
format, or are they asking to force a square peg in a round hole?
To be clear, what we have is:
id_path request_path target_path
product/12345 this-product.html catalog/product/view/id/12345
and what we want to accomplish is:
id_path request_path target_path
product/12345 this-product.html custom/url/path
Editing the record directly, as I understand it, is pointless, since the url indexing will just overwrite the custom target_path. Or am I wrong?