How to add “getAttributeText” to “related view” section?

Question

I am getting the error Fatal error: Call to a member function getAttributeText() on a non-object in /catalog/product/list/related.phtml on line 21 while add "getAttributeText" in the file /catalog/product/list/related.phtml.

This is code:

<?php
$merchant_name = $_product->getAttributeText('merchant_name');
if ($merchant_name){
   echo "By ". $_product->getResource()->getAttribute('merchant_name')->getFrontend()->getValue($_product);
}
 elseif ($_product->getIsEbayaffiliate()){
        echo "By eBay";
}
 else {
        echo "By Home Done";
}
?>

FYI, I am using the same "getAttributeText" in the following files and it's working perfectly:

 1. catalog/product/view.phtml
 2. catalog/product/list.phtml
 3. catalog/product/new.phtml
 4. catalog/product/special.phtml

Answer 1

Is it as simple as changing the variable $_product to $_item?

The error message you see is telling you that $_product is not an object.

Typically in related.phtml we write

foreach($this->getItems() as $_item)
{
    $_item->getName();
}

But I note you may also need to ensure that the attribute merchant_name has been included in the related items collection.

[no longer relevant and or misleading] I prepared a longer in-depth answer but it is not rigorous and so I will report more tomorrow.

As a test if you echo out get_class($_item) because I can't remember if $_item in related.phtml is Mage_Catalog_Model_Product. If $_item isn't Mage_Catalog_Model_Product then try $_item->getProduct() but I haven't tried it.