How to get list of attribute options in frontend view?

Question

I'm writing a custom display for certain attributes based on its label. Within the 'configurable.phtml' file, it has the following lines:

$_product = $this->getProduct();
$_attributes = Mage::helper('core')->decorateArray($this->getAllowAttributes());

I can loop through the attributes array and check the label no problem:

$special_attr = false;
foreach ($_attributes as $_attribute) {
    echo $_attribute->getLabel().'<br>';
    if ($_attribute->getLabel() === 'FooBar') {
        $special_attr = $_attribute;
    }
}

This will print out all of the labels ("Color", "Size", etc.). I'm trying to get a list of all options and their values given this special attribute now, and I'm completely stumped. All of the other questions I have found have said something along the lines of using ->getSource()->getAllOptions(false), however, calling getSource() on this attribute just returns null.

How can I get all options given this special attribute?

if ($special_attr) {
    $options = $special_attr->??????
    // list all options??
}

Answer 1

You can try below code to get options of configurable attributes within configurable.phtml

$special_attr = false;
foreach ($_attributes as $_attribute) {
    echo $_attribute->getLabel().'<br>';
    if ($_attribute->getLabel() === 'FooBar') {
        $special_attr = $_attribute->getPrices();
    }
}

As you can see, the trick lies in $_attribute->getPrices(). This will give you an output like this for color attribute (if that is configurable)

Array
(
[0] => Array
    (
        [product_super_attribute_id] => 13
        [value_index] => 183
        [label] => Brown
        [default_label] => Brown
        [store_label] => Brown
        [is_percent] => 0
        [pricing_value] => 10.0000
        [use_default_value] => 1
        [value_id] => 15
    )

[1] => Array
    (
        [product_super_attribute_id] => 13
        [value_index] => 174
        [label] => Orange
        [default_label] => Orange
        [store_label] => Orange
        [is_percent] => 0
        [pricing_value] => 20.0000
        [use_default_value] => 1
        [value_id] => 16
    )

)

I believe this will be enough in your case.