Magento 1.9 Save recently viewed products in cookie

Question

I need to save the recently viewed products in a cookie. The way that if there's no recently viewed products in session it reads it from the cookie. But I can't find where to find this exactly.

I'm overriding the file app/code/core/Mage/Reports/Block/Product/Viewed.php in my local, where I added the method getItemsCollection() from Mage_Reports_Block_Product_Abstract, but my code doesn't work.

It saves the ids in a cookie, but I can't load them later.

public function getItemsCollection()
{
    if (is_null($this->_collection)) {
        $attributes = Mage::getSingleton('catalog/config')->getProductAttributes();

        $this->_collection = $this->_getModel()
            ->getCollection()
            ->addAttributeToSelect($attributes);

        if ($this->getCustomerId()) {
            $this->_collection->setCustomerId($this->getCustomerId());
        }

        $this->_collection->excludeProductIds($this->_getModel()->getExcludeProductIds())
            ->addUrlRewrite()
            ->setPageSize($this->getPageSize())
            ->setCurPage(1);


            $recent_viewed_product_ids = $this->_collection->getAllIds();

            $cookie = Mage::getSingleton('core/cookie');
            if ($cookie->get('recent_products')) {
                $cookie_ids = unserialize($cookie->get('recent_products'));
                $recent_viewed_product_ids = array_unique(array_merge($recent_viewed_product_ids,$cookie_ids), SORT_REGULAR);
            }

            if (!empty($recent_viewed_product_ids)) {
                $cookie = Mage::getSingleton('core/cookie');
                $cookie->set('recent_products', serialize($recent_viewed_product_ids), strtotime('2030-31-12 23:59:59 GMT'), '/');

                $this->_collection = $this->_getModel()
                                          ->getCollection()
                                          ->addAttributeToSelect($attributes)
                                          ->addAttributeToFilter('entity_id', array('in' => $recent_viewed_product_ids));


                if ($this->getCustomerId()) {
                    $this->_collection->setCustomerId($this->getCustomerId());
                }

                $this->_collection
                    ->setPageSize($this->getPageSize())
                    ->setCurPage(1);
            }


        /* Price data is added to consider item stock status using price index */
        $this->_collection->addPriceData();

        $ids = $this->getProductIds();
        if (empty($ids)) {
            $this->_collection->addIndexFilter();
        } else {
            $this->_collection->addFilterByIds($ids);
        }
        $this->_collection->setAddedAtOrder();
        if ($this->_useProductIdsOrder && is_array($ids)) {
            $this->_collection->setSortIds($ids);
        }

        Mage::getSingleton('catalog/product_visibility')
            ->addVisibleInSiteFilterToCollection($this->_collection);
    }

    return $this->_collection;
}

Answer 1

I think you have to mistakes in your code:

First, I guess getAllIds() of the collection returns more than just the last viewed ids since this method removes all joins, resets limits and filters etc.

So instead of $recent_viewed_product_ids = $this->_collection->getAllIds(); you should rather use $recent_viewed_product_ids = $this->getProductIds();

The second issue is ->addAttributeToFilter('entity_id', array('in' => $recent_viewed_product_ids));. entity_id is not an attribute therefore addFieldToFilter is the correct method. But anyway the collection has a method addFilterByIds so you can just call addFilterByIds($recent_viewed_product_ids); on the collection.

And you have some copied code which changes the collection again after your cookie logic.

I guess, something like this should work for you:

public function getItemsCollection()
{
    if (is_null($this->_collection)) {
        $attributes = Mage::getSingleton('catalog/config')->getProductAttributes();

        $this->_collection = $this->_getModel()
            ->getCollection()
            ->addAttributeToSelect($attributes);

        if ($this->getCustomerId()) {
            $this->_collection->setCustomerId($this->getCustomerId());
        }

        $this->_collection->excludeProductIds($this->_getModel()->getExcludeProductIds())
            ->addUrlRewrite()
            ->setPageSize($this->getPageSize())
            ->setCurPage(1);

        /* Price data is added to consider item stock status using price index */
        $this->_collection->addPriceData();

        $recent_viewed_product_ids = $this->getProductIds();

        $cookie = Mage::getSingleton('core/cookie');
        if ($cookie->get('recent_products')) {
            $cookie_ids = unserialize($cookie->get('recent_products'));
            $recent_viewed_product_ids = array_unique(array_merge($recent_viewed_product_ids,$cookie_ids), SORT_REGULAR);
        }

        if (!empty($recent_viewed_product_ids)) {
            $cookie = Mage::getSingleton('core/cookie');
            $cookie->set('recent_products', serialize($recent_viewed_product_ids), strtotime('2030-31-12 23:59:59 GMT'), '/');
            $this->_collection->addFilterByIds($recent_viewed_product_ids);
        } else {
            $this->_collection->addIndexFilter();
        }

        $this->_collection->setAddedAtOrder();
        if ($this->_useProductIdsOrder && is_array($recent_viewed_product_ids)) {
            $this->_collection->setSortIds($recent_viewed_product_ids);
        }

        Mage::getSingleton('catalog/product_visibility')
            ->addVisibleInSiteFilterToCollection($this->_collection);
    }

    return $this->_collection;
}