How to retrieve custom attributes in Opencart?

Question

I have defined some custom attributes and assigned them to products via the Opencart admin panel. I'm trying to retrieve these attributes upon checkout to adjust some shipping costs.

I'm currently working in the catalog/model/shipping/ups.php file in the getQuote function. I'm getting close with this:

print_r($this->cart->getProducts());

Which gives me the following product data:

Array
(
    [59] => Array
        (
            [key] => 59
            [product_id] => 59
            [name] => My Product Name 
            [model] => ABC
            [shipping] => 1
            [image] => data/myproduct.jpg
            [option] => Array
                (
                )

            [download] => Array
                (
                )

            [quantity] => 1
            [minimum] => 1
            [subtract] => 1
            [stock] => 1
            [price] => 29.99
            [total] => 29.99
            [reward] => 0
            [points] => 0
            [tax_class_id] => 0
            [weight] => 3.75
            [weight_class_id] => 5
            [length] => 0.00
            [width] => 0.00
            [height] => 0.00
            [length_class_id] => 3
        )

)

However, no custom attributes are returned. I'm sure there is a nice way to pass the product ID to an attribute-getting function, but I can't find it. The Opencart docs are a little lacking for the development side and no luck on Google.

Usually I'd grep the hell out of the whole directory structure to find what I'm looking for, but shell access is disabled on this particular web host :(.

EDIT

I believe Attributes are a newer feature that is built into Opencart. Its like a custom field.

Anyway, on the admin side I went to Catalog > Attributes and created a custom attribute called "Shipping Box Type". Then, under a specific product I can set the attribute. See screenshot. My goal is to retrieve the value of "Shipping Box Type". Does that answer your question @Cleverbot? I'm sure I can do a custom db query to grab it, but theres got to be a built-in function to grab attributes?

Answer 1

Retrieve attributes for a given product_id

$this->load->model('catalog/product');

$attributes = $this->model_catalog_product->getProductAttributes(59); 

print_r($attributes);

Output

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [attribute_group_id] => 9
            [name] => Shipping Fields
            [attribute] => Array
                (
                    [0] => Array
                        (
                            [attribute_id] => 16
                            [name] => Shipping Box Type
                            [text] => SM2
                        )

                )

        )

)

Taking it further, here is an example of looping through the products currently in the cart to see what attributes they have:

$this->load->model('catalog/product');

$cart_products = $this->cart->getProducts();

// get attributes for each product in the cart
foreach($cart_products as $product) {
    $attributes = $this->model_catalog_product->getProductAttributes($product['product_id']);
    print_r($attributes);
}

Answer 2

This is not the most intuitive feature in Opencart. First you have to go catalog>attributes>attribute groups and you have to create a group name that will be a title for your attribute. For this it might be "Shipping Specifications".

Then you need to go to catalog>attributes>attributes> and create a new attribute under "Shipping Specifications" named "Shipping Box Type".

Now you are ready to go to catalog>products and add the attribute to a product.

The catch is that it won't be displayed how you were hoping I think. It will show up under the specifications tab next to description on your products page. You have the easy option of changing "Specifications" to the Heading of your choice in catalog/view/*your_theme*/products/products.tpl or you can edit the same tpl file to change the container/format that the data output goes.