Help! I Can't Set A Catalog Product Collection's Page Size

Published: January 18, 2017

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• Magento

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I ran up against a pretty interesting issue recently. I was looking to render a custom block (descendant of Mage_Catalog_Block_Product_List) in a CMS block. You can do this with template variables…

{{block type="mpchadwick_customproductlist/list" template="mpchadwick/customproductlist/list.phtml"}}

Then, in my custom product list block I was setting up the collection in the constructor.

<?php

class Mpchadwick_CustomProductList_Block_List extends Mage_Catalog_Block_Product_List
{

    protected $helper;

    protected function _construct()
    {
    
        $this->helper = Mage::helper('mpchadwick_customproductlist');
        
        $collection = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')
            ->getCollection();
        
        $helper->filterCollection($collection);       
        
        $this->setCollection($collection);
         
        return parent::_construct();
    }
}

One of the things I was looking to do in the filterCollection was set the page size. However, no matter what I did (e.g. setPageSize, setPage, limit on the Varien_Db_Select object) it still wouldn’t work.

Finally, after an hour of pulling out my hair, I figured out why.

The Bloody Toolbar

If you look in the Mage_Catalog_Block_Product_List::_beforeToHtml() you’ll see the following line (some code omitted for clarity)…

protected function _beforeToHtml()
{
    $toolbar = $this->getToolbarBlock();

    $collection = $this->_getProductCollection();
    $toolbar->setCollection($collection);

    return parent::_beforeToHtml();
}

Looking at Mage_Catalog_Block_Product_List_Toolbar::setCollection() you’ll see the following (again, some code omitted for clarity)

public function setCollection($collection)
{
    $this->_collection = $collection;

    $limit = (int)$this->getLimit();
    if ($limit) {
        $this->_collection->setPageSize($limit);
    }
    return $this;
}

Aha! So before rendering a rendering Mage_Catalog_Block_Product_List (or any descendant) the toolbar sets the page size! Unfortunately, the toolbar doesn’t check if the someone already tried to set a limit on the collection.

What Can Be Done

Below is the entire body of Mage_Catalog_Block_Product_List::getLimit() in all its glory.

public function getLimit()
{
    $limit = $this->_getData('_current_limit');
    if ($limit) {
        return $limit;
    }

    $limits = $this->getAvailableLimit();
    $defaultLimit = $this->getDefaultPerPageValue();
    if (!$defaultLimit || !isset($limits[$defaultLimit])) {
        $keys = array_keys($limits);
        $defaultLimit = $keys[0];
    }

    $limit = $this->getRequest()->getParam($this->getLimitVarName());
    if ($limit && isset($limits[$limit])) {
        if ($limit == $defaultLimit) {
            Mage::getSingleton('catalog/session')->unsLimitPage();
        } else {
            $this->_memorizeParam('limit_page', $limit);
        }
    } else {
        $limit = Mage::getSingleton('catalog/session')->getLimitPage();
    }
    if (!$limit || !isset($limits[$limit])) {
        $limit = $defaultLimit;
    }

    $this->setData('_current_limit', $limit);
    return $limit;
}

The line(s) I’d like to draw your attention to is the following…

$limit = $this->_getData('_current_limit');
if ($limit) {
    return $limit;
}

If _current_limit is in the _data array of the object, just go with that.

How Can We Use This

The trick is to also override the getToolbarBlock in your custom block. What I did looks like this…

public function getToolbarBlock()
{
    $block = parent::getToolbarBlock();

    $block->setData('_current_limit', $this->helper->limit());

    return $block;
}

Conclusion

I hope that some of you found this post helpful, in case you run into a similar issue. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to drop a note below, or, as always, you can reach me on Twitter as well.