Get best selling or hot selling products list

Question

I am new to PHP. I am trying to get best selling products list using the code which I found in Mage_Adminhtml_Block_Dashboard_Tab_Products_Ordered class from _prepareCollection method.

if ($this->getParam('website')) {
        $storeIds = Mage::app()->getWebsite($this->getParam('website'))->getStoreIds();
        $storeId = array_pop($storeIds);
    } else if ($this->getParam('group')) {
        $storeIds = Mage::app()->getGroup($this->getParam('group'))->getStoreIds();
        $storeId = array_pop($storeIds);
    } else {
        $storeId = (int)$this->getParam('store');
    }

    $_productCollection = Mage::getResourceModel('sales/report_bestsellers_collection')
        ->setModel('catalog/product')
    ;                                
?>

But I can't get the best selling products list. I am getting something else(very big dump text) when I checked using

<?php echo Zend_Debug::dump($_productCollection); ?>

PS: $_productCollection is a variable which I suppose to store a array of products so that I can use it in foreach loop later.

Answer 1

you can iterate through $_productCollection and get the products.

foreach ($_productCollection as $product){
    //do something with $product
    //for example
    //Zend_Debug::dump($product->getData());
}

[EDIT] Each product in the collection is not actually a product. It only contains some details about the ordered qty.
If you call getData on a product you get something like this:

Array
(
    [period] => 2013-01-01 // probably January 1st current year
    [qty_ordered] => 2.0000// qty ordered
    [product_id] => 176 // id of product
    [product_name] => PRODUCT NAME HERE
    [product_price] => 44.99 //product price here
)

To get the full product you may need to do this :

foreach ($_productCollection as $product){
    $p = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')->setStoreId(Mage::app()->getStore()->getId())->load($product->getProductId());
    //attach the ordered qty
    $p->setQtyOrdered($product->getQtyOrdered());
    //do something with $p
    //for example
    //Zend_Debug::dump($p->getData());
}

I know that it's not really OK to use load in a loop. It may cause performance issues, but if you don't have many products you should be OK.