Magento 2: force 404 based on category attribute

Question

I have created a custom eav attribute for categeories (bool). If set to "no" a category page should present a 404 page.

I have created an observer for the event layout_load_before in which I would like to check the category and redirect to a 404 page if the conditions are met.

While "redirect" (as in a http 301 redirect) is not the proper term as I would like a direct 404 response instead.

I have tried throw new NotFoundException(__('Not found'));. It actually sends a 404 response header but the underlying category page gets rendered nonetheless.

This is my observer's execute function:

public function execute(\Magento\Framework\Event\Observer $observer)
{
    if ($observer->getFullActionName() == 'catalog_category_view'){
        $cat = $this->_registry->registry('current_category');

        if (!$cat->getData('cat404')) {
            throw new NotFoundException(__('Not found'));
        }
    }
}

Any idea?

Thank you

Answer 1

I figured best way to do it is to use a plugin on the category model method getIsActive:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<config xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="urn:magento:framework:ObjectManager/etc/config.xsd">
    <type name="Magento\Catalog\Model\Category">
        <plugin name="vendor_module_plugin_category" type="Vendor\Module\Plugin\Category" sortOrder="1"/>
    </type>
</config>

Plugin:

namespace Vendor\Module\Plugin;

class Category
{
    /**
     * @param \Magento\Catalog\Model\Category $category
     * @return bool
     */
    public function afterGetIsActive(\Magento\Catalog\Model\Category $category)
    {
        return ($category->getData('cat404') ? true : false);
    }
}