Get Disabled Category Collection

Question

A bit of a simple one, I just want to load a category collection and for it to include disabled categories either on their own or along with the enabled categories.

It seems that the standard collection call has an automatic 'active' filter on it:

Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->getCollection();

If anyone's done this before it would be a great help!

Answer 1

I had the same problem as you:

I was passing the following into the addIdFilter:

$category->getChildren();

Internally, getChildren() as well as getAllChildren() use Mage_Catalog_Model_Resource_Category::getChildren() which explicitly joins the is_active attribute and returns ids of active children only.

But the resource model also has a getChildrenIds() method which does not add this join. Also it conveniently returns a comma separated list by default.

Solution

Replace

$categoryCollection->addIdFilter(explode(',', $parentCategory->getChildren()));

with

$categoryCollection->addIdFilter(
    $parentCategory->getResource()->getChildrenIds($parentCategory)
);

Answer 2

I'd expect the following to give you what you need:

$categories = Mage::getModel('catalog/category')
    ->getCollection()
    ->addFieldToFilter('is_active',array("in"=>array('0', '1')))
    ->addAttributeToSelect('*'); // optional

Answer 3

I realised I was being an idiot!

I was passing the following into the addIdFilter:

$category->getChildren();

Instead of:

$category->getAllChildren();

My final code is now this:

$category = Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->load($id);
    $categories = $category->getCollection()
    ->addAttributeToSelect(array('name', 'thumbnail', 'description'))
    ->addIdFilter($category->getAllChildren());