breadcrumb question about rendering html

Question

At first let me admit, I'm not a programmer, although I have a lot of expierence in tweaking small bits of php here and there. Also I'm not very familiar with Magento's ways of coding.

I have this client who wants to add the manufacturer's brandname to the breadcrumb with a link to the brandname in it. We're using layered navigation that's where I got the link from.

The output I get is Home / Categoryname / productname of

<a href="http://linktobrand.html">Brandname</a>

Here in which the html doesn't get rendered because of the breadcrumbs block being echoed with the function toHtml().

Is there anyway I can bypass this?

Here's my code: (the code was put in the view.phtml of product)

//Get current category url
$current_category = Mage::registry('current_category')->getUrl();

//Get brandname
$brandname = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')->load($_product->getId())->getAttributeText('manufacturer');

//Strip .html and add the stuff from the layered navigation to it
$brandurl = str_replace(".html", "/l/". strtolower($brandname) .".html", $current_category);    
$brandnamemurl = "of <a href="" . $brandurl . "">" . $brandname . "</a>";

//breadcrumb stuff
$breadcrumbs = $this->getLayout()->getBlock('breadcrumbs');
$breadcrumbs->addCrumb('manufacturer', array('label'=>$brandnamemurl, 'title'=>$brandname));
echo $this->getLayout()->getBlock('breadcrumbs')->toHtml(); 

http://pastebin.com/csueRX6T

Answer 1

First, be sure you have the proper configuration in your theme's page.xml file. It should look something like this:

<block reference="header">
   <block type="page/html_breadcrumbs" name="breadcrumbs" as="breadcrumbs"/>
</block>

Then, call the html:

<?php echo $this->getChildHtml('breadcrumbs') ?>

Now, you should also be sure you have breadcrumbs enabled.

System -> Configuration -> Web -> Default Pages -> Show Breadcrumbs for CMS Pages

Be sure to select your proper Configuration Scope before making changes (top left - Default Config, Main Website, Default Store View, etc.), likely you want Main Website.

You may also want to hunt down your breadcrumbs.phtml file and have a peek at that.

Answer 2

Wow ok, I wanted to try one more thing and hurray, it worked!

html_entity_decode(); did the trick!

Here's what I did;

//Get current category url
$current_category = Mage::registry('current_category')->getUrl();
//Get brandname
$brandname = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')->load($_product->getId())->getAttributeText('manufacturer'); //get brand name
//Strip .html and add the stuff from the layered navigation to it
$brandurl = str_replace(".html", "/l/". strtolower($brandname) .".html", $current_category);    
$brandnamemurl = "of <a href=\"" . $brandurl . "\">" . $brandname . "</a>";

$breadcrumbs = $this->getLayout()->getBlock('breadcrumbs');
$breadcrumbs->addCrumb('manufacturer', array('label'=>$brandnamemurl, 'title'=>$brandname));

//I Added these two lines
$breadcrumbblock = $this->getLayout()->getBlock('breadcrumbs')->toHtml();  
echo html_entity_decode($breadcrumbblock);

Hopefully someone can make use of this someday maybe.