Create category navigation listings in Magento

In this article, we are going to discuss about How to create the Category navigation listings in Magento. This below code will display the categories and the current category's subcategory or categories and all sub-categories. The below code is working fine. I have recently stumbled on a much better, neater way to accomplish this. This method requires less database interaction and therefore should render faster on the front end.

Listing Categories in Magento 1.4.1.1 and Above

Before start, you need to make sure the block that you're working is of the type "catalog/navigation". If you're editing "catalog/navigation/left.phtml" then you should be okay.

This can be slow and often loads in more information than we need for a simple navigation menu. This version uses the Varien_Data_Tree class.

<div id="leftnav">
    <?php $helper = $this->helper('catalog/category') ?>
    <?php $categories = $this->getStoreCategories() ?>
    <?php if (count($categories) > 0): ?>
        <ul id="leftnav-tree" class="level0">
            <?php foreach($categories as $category): ?>
                <li class="level0<?php if ($this->isCategoryActive($category)): ?> active<?php endif; ?>">
                    <a href="<?php echo $helper->getCategoryUrl($category) ?>"><span><?php echo $this->escapeHtml($category->getName()) ?></span></a>
                    <?php if ($this->isCategoryActive($category)): ?>
                        <?php $subcategories = $category->getChildren() ?>
                        <?php if (count($subcategories) > 0): ?>
                            <ul id="leftnav-tree-<?php echo $category->getId() ?>" class="level1">
                                <?php foreach($subcategories as $subcategory): ?>
                                    <li class="level1<?php if ($this->isCategoryActive($subcategory)): ?> active<?php endif; ?>">
                                        <a href="<?php echo $helper->getCategoryUrl($subcategory) ?>"><?php echo $this->escapeHtml(trim($subcategory->getName(), '- ')) ?></a>
                                    </li>
                                <?php endforeach; ?>
                            </ul>
                            <script type="text/javascript">decorateList('leftnav-tree-<?php echo $category->getId() ?>', 'recursive')</script>
                        <?php endif; ?>
                    <?php endif; ?>
                </li>
            <?php endforeach; ?>
        </ul>
        <script type="text/javascript">decorateList('leftnav-tree', 'recursive')</script>
    <?php endif; ?>
</div>

If you copy and paste the above code into "catalog/navigation/left.phtml", it should work straight away. It should list all categories and any first level subcategories of the current category. You can modify this code to display all sub-categories by removing the IF statement at line 9.