How to get total amount of reviews belongs to one category? [Magento 1.9]

Question

I am trying to generate SEO rich data in Magento for a category or listing page. I just don't understand how can I get the total amount of reviews for a that category.

I don't want to slow down the category page.

Is it possible to get that by directly executing an SQL command?

Please help me :(

Answer 1

In the main product-list template, you will see the collection populated with $_productCollection=$this->getLoadedProductCollection(); somewhere near the top of file. Depending on whether you are using a custom theme, the file's location may be different, but the filepath will be something like this:

[magento-root]/app/design/frontend/<your-theme>/<your-subtheme>/template/catalog/product/list.phtml

Note: This is extending the default template, located at

[magento-root]/app/design/frontend/base/default/template/catalog/product/list.phtml

There are a few things that you could experiment with, but basically, you'd loop through the product-collection and use $_product->getRatingSummary() and possibly $_product->getReviewSummaryHtml() to get what some in-depth information.

Luckily, the default template already looks for a review, so you really just need to add a counter and/or custom logic in the two places that you see <?php if($_product->getRatingSummary()): ?>

So, if all you are looking for is the count. Add the following to the top of your file:

$reviewCount = 0;

..and there are two places (list and grid mode) that you would find a place to increment it. In the simplest example, you would replace this:

<?php if($_product->getRatingSummary()): ?>
<?php echo $this->getReviewsSummaryHtml($_product) ?>
<?php endif; ?>

with this:

<?php if($_product->getRatingSummary()) {
    $reviewCount++;
    echo $this->getReviewsSummaryHtml($_product) ?>
}?>

And after the loop is finished, you would have the total number of reviews for the category. If you need it at the top of the product-list, you could loop through on your own and add custom output:

<?php 
$reviews = array();  // this will be populated with the output for products with reviews

foreach ($_productCollection as $_product) {
    if($_product->getRatingSummary()) 
        $reviews[] = $this->getReviewsSummaryHtml($_product, 'short');
}
$reviewCount = count($reviews);
?>