8 thoughts on “Magento Grouped Product Redirect Tutorial”

1. Hi Oleg,

   This tutorial is the very good!

   Concise and clear, the best I have ever worked from and the solution worked first time.

   Thank-you

   Reply ↓

2. Hello again Oleg,

   I just noticed one very minor thing;
   I assumed as the grouped product was associated to a category the re-direct would now show the breadcrumb trail but it does not.
   It still show no breadcrumbs as it did with the simple product not placed in a category.
   Any thoughts on this?

   Thanks, Dan

   Reply ↓

   • Hi Daniel,

     I think, I’ve figured out why the breadcrumbs don’t work.

     The breadcrumb display of the category path depends on the Magento registry value current_category which is set in the same function Mage_Catalog_Helper_Product::initProduct whose event my extension uses to redirect the product page. When the browser requests a simple product’s URL, this function is first invoked for the simple product. If the simple product is assigned to a category, this category’s ID is assigned to the current_category registry value. Later this value is used by the URL Rewrite system to return the grouped product URL containing both references to the product and the category. If the simple product has no parent category, the current_category will remain empty.

     If Magento doesn’t know which category to use, it won’t be able to find the category path when my Observer function requests the URL of the grouped product. The URL rewrite then will return the URL with the product name only. Without the category parameter in the URL the breadcrumb helper won’t display the category.

     Unfortunately I can’t offer a solution to this problem. Products in Magento can be assigned to multiple categories and Magento has to have the category context when generating product URLs. In my sample extension this context is provided by the simple product. If the simple product is not assigned to any category, there is no context. You’ll have to figure out a way to tell Magento what the category the grouped product is in.

     Reply ↓

3. Hi Oleg,

   Thanks again for your detailed explanation.

   I have solved the breadcrumbs showing when following the simple product path by placing the simple product into a category but changing the product visibility to search only.

   Reply ↓

   • Great! I’m happy this post was helpful for you.

     Reply ↓

4. Note that this code does not work properly if the simple product has more than one parent. For instance we have small add-on accessory which is a hidden simple product. It itself is part of a group item for the accessory. But the simple product is also listed on many other grouped products. So your code above, the logic that the first parent ID that is a grouped item is the proper parent is not always true.

   Unfortunately, we like the ease of adding the accessory to the cart at the same time as the main product so we will be adding a “parent ID” attribute to the simple items which will point to the correct grouped item. The code above could easily be modified for this operation. The downside is more work maintaining the catalog, but seems like the only way.

   Reply ↓

5. Hi Oleg,

   great idea with your extension but one tweak. Your showing in Listing 2 that your are loading a catalog/product within a foreach. This is an anti-pattern. The refactored version can look like:

   
           $product             = $observer->getEvent()->getProduct();
           $groupedTypeInstance = Mage::getModel('catalog/product_type_grouped');
           $parentIds           = $groupedTypeInstance->getParentIdsByChild($product->getId());
   
           $parentCollection = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')
               ->getCollection()
               ->addAttributeToFilter('entity_id', array('in' => $parentIds))
               ->addAttributeToFilter('type_id', Mage_Catalog_Model_Product_Type::TYPE_GROUPED);
           $redirect         = Mage::getStoreConfigFlag(
               'catalog/grouped_options/redirect_enabled',
               Mage::app()->getStore()->getId()
           );
   
           if (1 === $parentCollection->count() && $redirect) {
               Mage::app()->getResponse()->setRedirect($parentCollection->getFirstItem()->getProductUrl());
               return;
           }
   
           foreach ($parentCollection as $p) {
               /** @var  $p Mage_Catalog_Model_Product */
   
               if ($redirect) {
                   Mage::app()->getResponse()->setRedirect($p->getProductUrl());
                   return;
               }
           }
   
   

   A simple product can have multiple parent products … so you need somehow to check which parent product the customer really wants…

   Also for checking types please use always the === which is more secure.

   Cheers Cyrill

   Reply ↓

   • Thanks Cyrill,

     This is a great improvement!

     Reply ↓