Display Parent category and subcategories of current parent in Magento

How to show parent and sub category menu items of parent items in magento.

Display Parent Category

This also takes into consideration where you are in the system. For example if you are in a subcategory, then parent category of the subcategory will be displayed. However, if you are in a subcategory of DEFAULT CATEGORY, then the code checks for this and displays your current category.

We placed the following code into our template sidebar
e.g.: /app/design/frontend/default/your-bespoke-design-template/template/catalog/navigation/leftnav.phtml

<?php
$currentCat = Mage::registry('current_category');

//if Rootcategory display current category only
//this gets around the problem of displaying DEFAULT CATEGORY
if ( $currentCat->getParentId() == Mage::app()->getStore()->getRootCategoryId() )

//Display current category
echo $this->getCurrentCategory()->getName() ;

else

{
// Display ParentCategory of Current Category
echo $this->getCurrentCategory()->getParentCategory()->getName() ;
}
?>

Display SubCategory of current Parent category

Show Child categories based on current Parent Category; extremely useful for navigational purposes.

Again for those wanting subcategories of the current page, we used the following code:
e.g.: /app/design/frontend/default/your-bespoke-design-template/template/catalog/navigation/leftnav.phtml

<?php
    $currentCat = Mage::registry('current_category');

    if ( $currentCat->getParentId() == Mage::app()->getStore()->getRootCategoryId() )
    {
        // current category is a toplevel category
        $loadCategory = $currentCat;
    }
    else
    {
        // current category is a sub-(or subsub-, etc...)category of a toplevel category
        // load the parent category of the current category
        $loadCategory = Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->load($currentCat->getParentId());
    }
    $subCategories = explode(',', $loadCategory->getChildren());

    foreach ( $subCategories as $subCategoryId )
    {
        $cat = Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->load($subCategoryId);

        if($cat->getIsActive())
        {
            echo '<a href="'.$cat->getURL().'">'.$cat->getName().'</a>';
        }
    }
?>

Live example

www.summitjunkie.co.uk/mountains

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20 Comments

9sixes June 24, 2010

I’ve been hunting “everywhere” for this! Thanks a million!!
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Leanne September 7, 2010

Thanks! This works on all Category pages but it is causing a fatal error on the homepage and all other pages not associated with a Category. I get this error:

Fatal error: Call to a member function getParentId() on a non-object…

Can you help?

Thanks
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admin September 7, 2010

Sorry this was built for use within the Magento category sections only.
We used different layouts to avoid any errors elsewhere; will take further R&D to get working across Magento.
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Pat October 14, 2010

I’ve been looking everywhere for this!!!

Thanks heaps!
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admin October 14, 2010

Glad it was helpful Pat
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Confused October 14, 2010

Could you explain where this code needs to be inserted please.
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admin October 14, 2010

We used it in the sidebar of one of our templates, so that sub-cats of the current cat would display:

/app/design/frontend/default/your-bespoke-design-template/template/catalog/navigation/leftnav.phtml

Example of it working:
http://www.summitjunkie.co.uk/mountains
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Beauty-Presence December 13, 2010

I get an error when I insert this code… sorry I don’t really know PHP so probably it’s very to fix, the error is at the end of the code snippet..

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_ENDFOREACH in \app\design\frontend\bp\bp-theme\template\catalog\category\view.phtml on line 76
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Beauty-Presence December 13, 2010

oops I posted on the wrong place, this works nicely!
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Animesh Sheolikar January 27, 2011

Thanks .It was beautiful and effortless coding
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Tony February 7, 2011

@Leanne–You just need to add a conditional statement to prevent that code from running on non-category pages:

if (Mage::registry(’current_category’)){
//insert your category code here
}
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Matthew Galvin March 15, 2011

Any idea how to get this to return the subcats in their proper order?
This code displays them listed by id ASC and I want to order by position ASC
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Caleb April 21, 2011

Thanks for posting this code! Is there a way to apply an active class to the subcategory link? So when you are in the subcategory page it will be highlighted in the navigation?
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vignesh April 28, 2011

How can i arrange the Categories by ASC order by name..
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vignesh April 28, 2011

i have to display categories in the page same like this.

Example of it working:
http://www.summitjunkie.co.uk/mountains

Subcategories for mountains
Ben Nevis
Buachaille Etive Mor.. etc

Showing there in Ascending order by name.
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admin April 28, 2011

To add a sort to the list, try using the code found in this thread:
http://www.magentocommerce.com/boards/viewthread/227052/
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Power Balance June 9, 2011

Display SubCategory of current Parent category, i had try, that’s good help me.
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Top Englsih Songs June 10, 2011

It works like a charm, Thanks!!
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Richard June 16, 2011

Worked like a charm, thanks!
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HFE July 5, 2011

good post dude thanks
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