Advanced layout updates for categories and products in Magento

Recently I had a task to modify sorting in only one category of Magento shop.
What I had to do is “only” to change which attribute will be used for default sorting and I needed to reverse ordering from ascending to descending.
Task seems simple, right?

All you need to do is add/edit your category and in admin panel set your new configuration:

Default Product Listing Sort By:

Custom Layout Update:

For custom layout update I needed to add this 3 lines:

<reference name="product_list_toolbar">
   <action method="setDefaultDirection"><dir>desc</dir></action>
</reference>

That works on Magento CE 1.4.2.0 and 1.5.0.1.
Issue was that client has Professional Edition 1.9.0.0 and that 3 lines just don’t work via custom layout update when you use it in admin panel, everything else works but:

   <action method="setDefaultDirection"><dir>desc</dir></action>

JUST DOES NOT WORK!!!

I have described how to update layout of your custom controller in post
so can update anything trough your “local.xml” file.

Problem is that then you update category controller “catalog_category_default”, you will update all categories:

<catalog_category_default translate="label">
<reference name="product_list_toolbar">
   <action method="setDefaultDirection"><dir>desc</dir></action>
</reference>
</catalog_category_default>

and I needed only one to update with this particularly action method, so I opened Category and Products controllers and started to tracing…

I wanted to add my own handle, but that was requiring rewriting existing CategoryController class in my new module which I needed to create and configure, and I said it seemed very simple task.

Then I found out in CategoryController viewAction():

            $this->addActionLayoutHandles();
            $update->addHandle($category->getLayoutUpdateHandle());
            $update->addHandle('CATEGORY_' . $category->getId());
            $this->loadLayoutUpdates();

what was pretty interesting to me and my problem was solved with:

	<CATEGORY_20>
		<reference name="product_list_toolbar">
					<action method="setDefaultDirection"><dir>desc</dir></action>
			</reference>
	</CATEGORY_20>

Keyword is CATEGORY_20, 20 is id of category.

Same thing you can do with single products, you can found it at ProductController viewAction():

$update->addHandle('PRODUCT_'.$product->getId());

Enjoy coding!

<catalog_product_view translate="label"> <label>Catalog Product View (Any)</label> <CATEGORY_55> <reference name="content"> <block type="catalog/product_view" name="product.info" template="catalog/product/view-posters.phtml"> </block> </reference> </CATEGORY_55>> </catalog_product_view>

15 comments

This works great for me under 1.6.2:

<reference name="product_list_toolbar">
   <action method="setDefaultDirection" before="product_list_toolbar_pager"><dir>desc</dir></action>
</reference>

Ben Roe says:

20-06-2013 at 0:59

This works great for me under 1.6.2:

desc

Will says:

15-01-2012 at 18:58
Is it possible to add layout updates to individual pages within a category? For example to display 4 products on the first page, then 12 products per page for the rest of that category?

I don’t know if viewAction() allows you to add in something like the follwing in catalog.xml:
```
<CATEGORY_20_page=1>
    <reference name="something">
                <action method="ssomething"><dir>desc</dir></action>
        </reference>
</CATEGORY_20_page=1>
```
raju says:

21-11-2011 at 14:24

@verdan…that will show me just 1 product but i want to have all the products of the category shown with its options.

Vedran Subotic says:

21-11-2011 at 13:52

@raju

copy/paste code from:

catalog/product/view.phtml
to
catalog/product/list.phtml

hint: enable template path hints to see exactly which files you need to modify

Raju says:

21-11-2011 at 13:47

@ verdan- can u tell me how?

Vedran Subotic says:

21-11-2011 at 7:59

@raju sure there is

raju says:

19-11-2011 at 17:34

Is there any way to show the PRODUCT OPTIONS of configurable products in the category page?

Tom says:

30-10-2011 at 13:44

Hi, any idea how to change the category display mode for selected categories using xml layout updates?

Default setting is ‘grid’, but I need to change it to ‘table’ for selected categories.
Any suggestions are welcome.

bradley says:

11-10-2011 at 21:24

Hi, really dig your blog, great stuff. In regards to this post topic, I have a few categories that need be presented differently on the product details page, basically i need to use an altered view.phtml for some categories. How can i apply this in the custom layout update or catalog.xml template? Can I do something like this

Catalog Product View (Any)

>

Ksaltik says:

03-04-2011 at 18:03

Hi,

I use your Slide categories extension with EM Computer Store template. The template comes with magento 1.4.0.1 version. I am new in magento but I update my magento 1.5.0.1. And I reinstall the extension. It is working in frontpage. The menu catalog -> Featured Products also work but in settings panel the site says 404 the site not found error. Are there any solution for this. Thank you for this wonderful extension.

Greetings from Turkey 🙂

Ingo says:

14-03-2011 at 11:55

Hi, I had the same problem when trying to set a custom background on all subcategories and products. In the end I put everything into a (free) module which extends Product- and Category-Model to inherit Layout Updates which are defined somewhere higher in the hierarchy:

http://www.exanto.de/magento-module-und-hacks.html

Greetings from Germany!

Vedran Subotic says:

26-02-2011 at 13:34

@Dan

you have the solution described above
for fixes you will need to go to this address:

http://www.magentocommerce.com/bug-tracking/report/

Dan Shields says:

25-02-2011 at 15:49

Yeah, have you guys looked into why those layout updates don’t work, I don’t get it and didn’t have a lot of time to figure it out, so I did the same thing as you.

15 comments

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