Magento Category model not loading all data

Question

I am building a custom navigation menu in Magento which displays the categories from a different store with a different root category from the current store. Some of the categories should be hidden as they have 'Include in Navigation Menu' set to No.

It should be possible to read this attribute from the category model as in this question: How do I detect if a category has Include in Navigation Menu set to NO?

However $category->getIncludeInMenu() is returning NULL for all categories on my Magento EE 1.11 installation.

// Load child categories for a specific root category
$_uk_default_root_id = Mage::app()->getStore('uk_default')->getRootCategoryId();
$_uk_default_root_category = Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->load($_uk_default_root_id); 
$_sub_categories = $_uk_default_root_category->getChildrenCategories();

// Loop through the categories
foreach ($_sub_categories as $_category)
{
    if ($_category->getIsActive() && $_category->getIncludeInMenu())
    {
        <echo navigation link>
    }
}

A var dump of one of the categories shows no 'include_in_menu' attribute, although the 'is_active' attribute works as expected. Is there an alternative way to determine if a category should be displayed in the navigation?

Var dump of category object:

object(Mage_Catalog_Model_Category)[423]
  protected '_eventPrefix' => string 'catalog_category' (length=16)
  protected '_eventObject' => string 'category' (length=8)
  protected '_cacheTag' => string 'catalog_category' (length=16)
  protected '_useFlatResource' => boolean false
  private '_designAttributes' => 
    array (size=6)
      0 => string 'custom_design' (length=13)
      1 => string 'custom_design_from' (length=18)
      2 => string 'custom_design_to' (length=16)
      3 => string 'page_layout' (length=11)
      4 => string 'custom_layout_update' (length=20)
      5 => string 'custom_apply_to_products' (length=24)
  protected '_treeModel' => null
  protected '_defaultValues' => 
    array (size=0)
      empty
  protected '_storeValuesFlags' => 
    array (size=0)
      empty
  protected '_lockedAttributes' => 
    array (size=0)
      empty
  protected '_isDeleteable' => boolean true
  protected '_isReadonly' => boolean false
  protected '_resourceName' => string 'catalog/category' (length=16)
  protected '_resource' => null
  protected '_resourceCollectionName' => string 'catalog/category_collection' (length=27)
  protected '_dataSaveAllowed' => boolean true
  protected '_isObjectNew' => null
  protected '_data' => 
    array (size=15)
      'entity_id' => string '16' (length=2)
      'entity_type_id' => string '3' (length=1)
      'attribute_set_id' => string '3' (length=1)
      'parent_id' => string '15' (length=2)
      'created_at' => string '2011-11-16 12:16:27' (length=19)
      'updated_at' => string '2011-12-19 16:19:08' (length=19)
      'path' => string '1/15/16' (length=7)
      'position' => string '1' (length=1)
      'level' => string '2' (length=1)
      'children_count' => string '8' (length=1)
      'is_active' => string '1' (length=1)
      'request_path' => null
      'name' => string 'Vacuum Cleaners' (length=15)
      'url_key' => string 'vacuum-cleaners' (length=15)
      'is_anchor' => string '1' (length=1)
  protected '_hasDataChanges' => boolean true
  protected '_origData' => 
    array (size=15)
      'entity_id' => string '16' (length=2)
      'entity_type_id' => string '3' (length=1)
      'attribute_set_id' => string '3' (length=1)
      'parent_id' => string '15' (length=2)
      'created_at' => string '2011-11-16 12:16:27' (length=19)
      'updated_at' => string '2011-12-19 16:19:08' (length=19)
      'path' => string '1/15/16' (length=7)
      'position' => string '1' (length=1)
      'level' => string '2' (length=1)
      'children_count' => string '8' (length=1)
      'is_active' => string '1' (length=1)
      'request_path' => null
      'name' => string 'Vacuum Cleaners' (length=15)
      'url_key' => string 'vacuum-cleaners' (length=15)
      'is_anchor' => string '1' (length=1)
  protected '_idFieldName' => string 'entity_id' (length=9)
  protected '_isDeleted' => boolean false
  protected '_oldFieldsMap' => 
    array (size=0)
      empty
  protected '_syncFieldsMap' => 
    array (size=0)
      empty

Answer 1

This is due to Magento lazy loading the category model. The getChildrenCategories() method on the Mage_Catalog_Model_Category model returns a collection of category models and Magento only loads the core model data rather than the additional EAV data for each model. The include_in_menu attribute is stored in the EAV data store and has not been loaded.

Each category can be forced to load by calling $_category->load(); which will force Magento to load the additional EAV data for each category.

// Loop through the categories
foreach ($_sub_categories as $_category)
{
    $_category->load();
    if ($_category->getIsActive() && $_category->getIncludeInMenu())
    {
        <echo navigation link>
    }
}

This changes the _data array from this:

array (size=15)
  'entity_id' => string '16' (length=2)
  'entity_type_id' => string '3' (length=1)
  'attribute_set_id' => string '3' (length=1)
  'parent_id' => string '15' (length=2)
  'created_at' => string '2011-11-16 12:16:27' (length=19)
  'updated_at' => string '2011-12-19 16:19:08' (length=19)
  'path' => string '1/15/16' (length=7)
  'position' => string '1' (length=1)
  'level' => string '2' (length=1)
  'children_count' => string '8' (length=1)
  'is_active' => string '1' (length=1)
  'request_path' => null
  'name' => string 'Vacuum Cleaners' (length=15)
  'url_key' => string 'vacuum-cleaners' (length=15)
  'is_anchor' => string '1' (length=1)

To this:

array (size=33)
  'entity_id' => string '16' (length=2)
  'entity_type_id' => string '3' (length=1)
  'attribute_set_id' => string '3' (length=1)
  'parent_id' => string '15' (length=2)
  'created_at' => string '2011-11-16 12:16:27' (length=19)
  'updated_at' => string '2011-12-19 16:19:08' (length=19)
  'path' => string '1/15/16' (length=7)
  'position' => string '1' (length=1)
  'level' => string '2' (length=1)
  'children_count' => string '8' (length=1)
  'is_active' => string '1' (length=1)
  'request_path' => null
  'name' => string 'Vacuum Cleaners' (length=15)
  'url_key' => string 'vacuum-cleaners' (length=15)
  'is_anchor' => string '1' (length=1)
  'meta_title' => null
  'display_mode' => string 'PRODUCTS' (length=8)
  'custom_design' => null
  'page_layout' => null
  'url_path' => string 'vacuum-cleaners' (length=15)
  'image' => string 'heading_vacuums_1.png' (length=21)
  'include_in_menu' => string '1' (length=1)
  'landing_page' => null
  'custom_use_parent_settings' => string '0' (length=1)
  'custom_apply_to_products' => string '0' (length=1)
  'filter_price_range' => null
  'description' => null
  'meta_keywords' => null
  'meta_description' => null
  'custom_layout_update' => null
  'available_sort_by' => null
  'custom_design_from' => null
  'custom_design_to' => null

Which includes the include_in_menu attribute.