Attributes not showing on product page

Question

I'm trying to display my attributes on the product view page, it worked fine at first but suddenly it stopped working and I get the following error:

Call to a member function getSortedChildren() on a non-object in /template/catalog/product/view/type/options/configurable.phtml on line 32

When I look in the file on line 32 I find the following:

$_renderers = $this->getChild('attr_renderers')->getSortedChildren();

How can I fix this problem?

Answer 1

Just an other "feature" of the rwd theme.
I assume you built your theme based on the rwd theme.
Make sure you have this in your catalog.xml layout file of your theme inside the layout handle <PRODUCT_TYPE_configurable>

    <reference name="product.info.options.wrapper">
        <block type="catalog/product_view_type_configurable" name="product.info.options.configurable" as="options_configurable" before="-" template="catalog/product/view/type/options/configurable.phtml">
            <block type="core/text_list" name="product.info.options.configurable.renderers" as="attr_renderers" />
            <block type="core/text_list" name="product.info.options.configurable.after" as="after" />
        </block>
    </reference>

If that does not work , copy the file suggested in the error message to your theme and replace this:

    foreach ($_renderers as $_rendererName):
        $_renderer = $this->getChild('attr_renderers')->getChild($_rendererName);
        if (method_exists($_renderer, 'shouldRender') && $_renderer->shouldRender($_product, $_attribute, $_jsonConfig)):
            $_renderer->setProduct($_product);
            $_renderer->setAttributeObj($_attribute);
            echo $_renderer->toHtml();
            $_rendered = true;
            break;
        endif;
    endforeach;

with this:

    $attRenderes = $this->getChild('attr_renderers');
    if ($attRenderes) : 
        foreach ($_renderers as $_rendererName):

            $_renderer = $this->getChild('attr_renderers')->getChild($_rendererName);
            if (method_exists($_renderer, 'shouldRender') && $_renderer->shouldRender($_product, $_attribute, $_jsonConfig)):
                $_renderer->setProduct($_product);
                $_renderer->setAttributeObj($_attribute);
                echo $_renderer->toHtml();
                $_rendered = true;
                break;
            endif;
        endforeach;
     endif;