Remove Price attribute from a custom product type

Question

I have created a new product type that doesn't need a price attribute so I would like to hide the tab in the backend in a similar way as Grouped product are.

How can I accomplish this ?

Answer 1

The attribute tabs are displayed only if the group tab contains any attribute.

see Mage_Adminhtml_Block_Catalog_Product_Edit_Tabs::_prepareLayout()

if (count($attributes)==0) {
                    continue;
                }

So there is nothing special here: if you look at the prices attribute you will see they are not assigned to the grouped products that is why the tab is not displayed.

You can change the apply_to values of any of the product attributes in 2 way: manually or using an installer script.

Example installer script:

<?php
$installer = $this;
$installer->startSetup();

$price_attributes = array(
    'group_price',
    'msrp_display_actual_price_type',
    'price',
    'special_price',
    'tier_price',
    'msrp_enabled',
    'msrp',
);

foreach ($price_attributes as $attribute_code) {
    $installer->updateAttribute('catalog_product', $attribute_code, 'apply_to', 'simple,configurable,virtual');
}

$installer->endSetup();

Note:
This will also have impact on frontend so you need to modify price.html and price index according to your needs