Show Disabled products in collection

Question

On my category page I am trying to show all it's products, even though they are all disabled.

On the category page I am using:

$categoryModel = Mage::getModel('catalog/category');
$_category  = $this->getCurrentCategory();
$_category_id  = $_category->getId();

$products = $categoryModel->load($_category_id)
->getProductCollection()
->addAttributeToSelect(array('id', 'name','etc...'))
->addAttributeToFilter('status', Mage_Catalog_Model_Product_Status::STATUS_DISABLED);

But my collection is always empty.

I have also tried using:

->addAttributeToFilter('status', 2)

Without success. If i switch the filter to enabled products with either:

->addAttributeToFilter('status', Mage_Catalog_Model_Product_Status::STATUS_ENABLED)

->addAttributeToFilter('status', 1)

Then (in any other category where products are enabled) then the collection shows all products.

I have flat catalog turned off/set to No in my configuration.

Answer 1

Take a look at Mage_Catalog_Model_Category::getProductCollection():

public function getProductCollection()
{
    $collection = Mage::getResourceModel('catalog/product_collection')
        ->setStoreId($this->getStoreId())
        ->addCategoryFilter($this);
    return $collection;
}

That ProductCollection::addCategoryFilter() call does quite a lot of stuff related to category products display logic, mainly via ProductCollection::_applyProductLimitations().

You can set up a frontend observer to consume the catalog_product_collection_apply_limitations_after event dispatched in _applyProductLimitations(). You might need to start with debugging the collection in your observer to get the current SELECT statement which you'll need to bang your logic onto.