Magento read-only and hidden product attributes

Question

I would like to have some Magento product attributes that are not editable from the admin interface and some that are not visible at all in that interface (as a method of storing some persistent information about a product that should not be viewed by human users.. it's the only way of doing this that i can think of, any other suggestions are welcome).

So my question is: Do all Magento attributes have to be visible and editable from the admin interface? If not, how can they be made read-only or hidden?

I noticed that in the admin interface there are some read-only fields, so it must be possible to do this one way or another. After searching stackoverflow for this I found a possible solution involving JavaScript, but I would like to not go down that path if it's at all possible.

Answer 1

OK, it looks like it can be done after all. After adding an observer for the catalog_product_load_after event, the lockAttribute method of the Mage_Catalog_Model_Abstract class may be used to make a product attribute read-only. Here is the code for the observer method:

public function lockAttributes($observer) {
    $event = $observer->getEvent();
    $product = $event->getProduct();
    $product->lockAttribute('attribute_code');
}