Categories and Attributes in Magento: Part 2

In the previous part of the article, we saw how to Create Categories and Add products to our store. In this part by William Rice, we will learn how to create Attributes and Attribute Sets in Magento.

Time for action: Creating Attributes

In this section we will create an Attribute set for our store. First, we will create Attributes. Then, we will create the set.

Before you begin

Because Attributes are the main tool for describing your Products, it is important to make the best use of them. Plan which Attributes you want to use. What aspects or characteristics of your Products will a customer want to search for? Make those Attributes. What aspects of your Products will a customer want to choose? Make these Attributes, too.

Attributes are organized into Attribute Sets. Each set is a collection of Attributes. You should create different sets to describe the different types of Products that you want to sell. In our coffee store, we will create two Attribute Sets: one for Single Origin coffees and one for Blends. They will differ in only one way. For Single Origin coffees, we will have an Attribute showing the country or region where the coffee is grown. We will not have this Attribute for blends because the coffees used in a blend can come from all over the world. Our sets will look like the following:

Now, let's create the Attributes and put them into sets.

The result of the following directions will be several new Attributes and two new Attribute Sets:

1. If you haven't already, log in to your site's backend, which we call the Administrative Panel:



2. Select Catalog | Attributes | Manage Attributes. list of all the Attributes is displayed. These attributes have been created for you. Some of these Attributes (such as color, cost, and description) are visible to your customers. Other Attributes affect the display of a Product, but your customers will never see them. For example, custom_design can be used to specify the name of a custom layout, which will be applied to a Product's page. Your customers will never see the name of the custom layout.



We will add our own attributes to this list.

3. Click the Add New Attribute button. The New Product Attribute page displays:



There are two tabs on this page: Properties and Manage Label / Options. You are in the Properties tab. The Attribute Properties section contains settings that only the Magento administrator (you) will see. These settings are values that you will use when working with the Attribute. The Frontend Properties section contains settings that affect how this Attribute will be presented to your shoppers. We will cover each setting on this page.

4. Attribute Code is the name of the Attribute. Your customers will never see this value. You will use it when managing the Attribute.

Refer back to the list of Attributes that appeared in Step 2. The Attribute identifier appears in the first column, labelled Attribute Code. The Attribute Code must contain only lowercase letters, numbers, and the underscore character. And, it must begin with a letter. The Scope of this Attribute can be set as Store View, Website, or Global. For now, you can leave it set to the default—Store View. The other values become useful when you use one Magento installation to create multiple stores or multiple web sites. That is beyond the scope of this quick-start guide.

5. After you assign an Attribute set to a Product, you will fill in values for the Attributes. For example, suppose you assign a set that contains the attributes color, description, price, and image. You will then need to enter the color, description, price, and image for that Product.

Notice that each of the Attributes in that set is a different kind of data. For color, you would probably want to use a drop-down list to make selecting the right color quick and easy. This would also avoid using different terms for the same color such as "Red" and "Magenta". For description, you would probably want to use a freeform text field. For price, you would probably want to use a field that accepts only numbers, and that requires you to use two decimal places. And for image, you would want a field that enables you to upload a picture.

The field Catalog Input Type for Store Owner enables you to select the kind of data that this Attribute will hold:



In our example we are creating an Attribute called roast. When we assign this value to a Product, we want to select a single value for this field from a list of choices. So, we will select Dropdown. If you select Dropdown or Multiple Select for this field, then under the Manage Label/Options tab, you will need to enter the list of choices (the list of values) for this field.

6. If you select Yes for Unique Value, then no two products can have the same value for this Attribute. For example, if I made roast a unique Attribute, that means only one kind of coffee in my store could be a Light roast, only one kind of coffee could be a French roast, only one could be Espresso, and so on. For an Attribute such as roast, this wouldn't make much sense. However, if this Attribute was the SKU of the Product, then I might want to make it unique. That would prevent me from entering the same SKU number for two different Products.
7. If you select Yes for Values Required, then you must select or enter a value for this Attribute. You will not be able to save a Product with this Attribute if you leave it blank. In the case of roast, it makes sense to require a value. Our customers would not buy a coffee without knowing what kind of roast the coffee has.
8. Input Validation for Store Owner causes Magento to check the value entered for an Attribute, and confirm that it is the right kind of data. When entering a value for this Attribute, if you do not enter the kind of data selected, then Magento gives you a warning message.



9. The Apply To field determines which Product Types can have this Attribute applied to them. Remember that the three Product Types in Magento are Simple, Grouped, and Configurable. Recall that in our coffee store, if a type of coffee comes in only one roast, then it would be a Simple Product. And, if the customer gets to choose the roast, it would be a Configurable Product. So we want to select at least Simple Product and Configurable Product for the Apply To field:



But what about Grouped Product? We might sell several different types of coffee in one package, which would make it a Grouped Product. For example, we might sell a Grouped Product that consists of a pound of Hawaiian Kona and a pound of Jamaican Blue Mountain. We could call this group something like "Island Coffees". If we applied the Attribute roast to this Grouped Product, then both types of coffee would be required to have the same roast.

However, if Kona is better with a lighter roast and Blue Mountain is better with a darker roast, then we don't want them to have the same roast. So in our coffee store, we will not apply the Attribute roast to Grouped Products. When we sell coffees in special groupings, we will select the roast for each coffee.

You will need to decide which Product Types each Attribute can be applied to. If you are the store owner and the only one using your site, you will know which Attributes should be applied to which Products. So, you can safely choose All Product Types for this setting.