Get categories by id

Question

I'd like to retrive the categories tree excluding some categories of level 2. Here is my code where I exclude them

$categories = Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->getCollection()
    ->addAttributeToSelect('id')
    ->addAttributeToSelect('name')
    ->addAttributeToSelect('is_active')
    ->addAttributeToFilter('level', array('eq'=>2))
    ->addAttributeToFilter('entity_id',array('nin'=>array($parent_id_to_exclude)))
    ->load()
;

Then I imagine to create a foreach loop to retrieve the subcategories, but I have no idea which is the attribute to select the parents. thanks

Answer 1

You can get child items by filtering on parent_id. Optionally there is a resource model Mage_Catalog_Model_Resource_Category_Tree that accepts a collection via method addCollectionData.

I've never used it to be honest but might help with building the category tree