Breadcrumbs are not appearing because they are null

Question

I am trying to move the breadcrumbs to inside a category page, and Ive been struggling. I have been looking at the following resources, but they have not helped:

• http://forum.azmagento.com/magento-users-guide/breadcrumbs-are-not-showing-in-magento-cms-pages-745.html
• http://www.magenshop.com/how-to/breadcrumbs-right-of-category-name.html

I have added the following to remove the breadcrumbs from root and then add them as a child of category.products. Like so:

<catalog_category_layered translate="label">
    <reference name="root">
        <remove name="breadcrumbs"/>
    </reference>
    <reference name="category.products">
        <block type="page/html_breadcrumbs" name="onlybreadcrumbs" as="onlybreadcrumbs" template="page/html/breadcrumbs.phtml"/>
    </reference>
</catalog_category_layered>

This is at the top of catalog/category/view.phtml I am adding the breadcrumbs file with this:

<?php echo $this->getLayout()->getBlock('onlybreadcrumbs')->toHtml(); ?>

At the top of page/html/breadcrumbs.phtml I have this:

<pre>Crumbs:<?php var_dump($crumbs); ?></pre>

The output at the top of a category pages is this:

Crumbs:NULL

My problem here is that after moving the breadcrumbs into the category view file, the $crumbs variable is NULL, and as a result none of the breadcrumbs appear.

---

In the end I used code from this page to get around the problem: http://awebtech.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/magento-add-breadcrumbs-in-pages-where.html

However this solution is basically to just rebuild the breadcrumbs from scratch, and it feels like a bit of a hack.

Can someone explain to me, after moving the breadcrumbs into another file, why $crumbs is now NULL - and most importantly, how to fix this issue properly.

Answer 1

Just came across the same issue. Following http://awebtech.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/magento-add-breadcrumbs-in-pages-where.html I made some adjustments, added (category) levels and links.

1) Add this code at the end of breadcrumbs.phtml

<?php if(!$crumbs): ?>
<?php
$urlRequest = Mage::app()->getFrontController()->getRequest();

$urlPart =  $urlRequest->getOriginalPathInfo();
if(is_null($urlPart))
{
    $urlPart = $urlRequest->getPathInfo();
}

$urlPart = substr($urlPart, 1 );
$currentUrl = $this->getUrl($urlPart);


$urlChunks = explode("/",$urlPart);

$lastlink = "";
$i = 0;
foreach($urlChunks as $urlChunk)
{
    $crumbLabel = ucfirst(str_replace(["-","_",".html"], " ", $urlChunk));
    $crumbs[$i]['label'] = $crumbLabel;
    $crumbs[$i]['link'] = $this->getUrl().($lastlink ? $lastlink."/" : "").str_replace(".html","",$urlChunk).".html";
    $lastlink = $urlChunk;
    $i++;
    if($i == count($urlChunks))
    {
        $crumbs[$i -1]['last'] = true;
        $crumbs[$i -1]['link'] = "";
    }

}
?>

This will create breadcrumbs array based on the current url.

2) Copy and paste the html code that prints the breadcrumb (<div class="breadcrumbs">...</div>) which should be the first thing in this .phtml.

Answer 2

Follow this

<catalog_category_layered translate="label">
        <reference name="root">
            <action method="unsetChild">
                <name>breadcrumbs</name>
            </action>
        </reference>
        <reference name="category.products">
            <action method="insert">
                <child>breadcrumbs</child>
            </action>
        </reference>
    </catalog_category_layered>

Put above code in your xml and in view.phtml add child html below where you want to show breadcrumb.

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