Access Magento Root Category URL

Question

From a default Magento install you are provided with a default category (a root category) and this usually has category ID 2. How can I access the root category page using this as a URL: http://example.com/catalog/category/view/id/2. This always 404.

The reason for this is because I want to make this the homepage (without having to go do any CMS layout updates) using system config web/default/front as catalog/category/view/id/2.

Answer 1

As part of the category controller action Magento validates the category against the Mage_Catalog_Helper_Category function canShow().

This will return false against the check against isInRootCategoryList(). This function goes and checks the category's parent ids against the store root category id:

$rootCategoryId = Mage::app()->getStore()->getRootCategoryId();
return in_array($rootCategoryId, $category->getParentIds());