Craft Commerce - Handling Product Types

Question

I am using Craft Commerce for the first time and am trying to dynamically generate a dropdown menu that contains links to each product type. I thought the best way to accomplish this would be by using a parameter in the URL i.e.

myurl.com/commerce/products?cat=books

I would be able to get the handle of the selected product type by using:

craft.commerce.products.type(productType).find()

I have two roadblocks that are preventing me from implementing this:

1. How do I get an array of all the product types so I can build the dropdown?

2. How do I get the name of a product type once I have the handle so I can display a Header at the top of the page based on the selected product type?

Also, is there a better way of implementing similar functionality that I am simply overlooking?

Thanks!

Answer 1

You can get all product types within your templates with:

{% for productType in craft.commerce.productTypes %}
  {{ productType.name }}<br>
{% endfor %}

There is no way to get a specific product type within templates at the moment, but I have added to the list. In the meantime you would need to look over all and find the one you want as above.

Answer 2

To expand on Luke's answer, you might try something like:

<form action="">
  <select name="availableProductTypes">
     {% for theType in craft.commerce.productTypes %}
        <option value="{{theType}}">{{theType.name}}</option>
     {% endfor %}
  </select>
  <input type="submit" value="Show">
</form>

Then you can show what was selected in the dropdown:

{% if craft.request.getParam('availableProductTypes') %}

 {% set theType = craft.request.getParam('availableProductTypes') %}

 <ul>
  {% for product in craft.commerce.products.type(theType).find() %}
   <li>{{product}}</li>
  {% else %}
   <li>No products found.</li>
 {% endfor %}
 </ul>

{% endif %}