Can't see products in categories after categorizing programmatically

Question

Using CE 1.8.1, I've just categorized a number of products using code like this:

$product = mage::getModel('catalog/product')->loadByAttribute('sku',$sku);
$product->setCategoryIds($cats);
$product->save();

I can't get the products to show up in their new categories on the front end. I see the results in the catalog_category_product table - the information is in the database. I also see it when I edit individual products in the admin. From the admin, I've reindexed everything and flushed all cache storage.

What can I do to see these new product categorizations?

Answer 1

The right way of doing this is to add the product to a category rather than assigning categories to a product.

Here is how Magento add a product to a category. Hope it helps...

public function assignProduct($categoryId, $productId, $position = null, $identifierType = null)
{
    $category = $this->_initCategory($categoryId);
    $positions = $category->getProductsPosition();
    $productId = $this->_getProductId($productId);
    $positions[$productId] = $position;
    $category->setPostedProducts($positions);

    try {
        $category->save();
    } catch (Mage_Core_Exception $e) {
        $this->_fault('data_invalid', $e->getMessage());
    }

    return true;
}