Magento: Missing collection for Mage_Catalog_Block_Product_List_Toolbar in toolbar.phtml after upgrade from 1.3 to 1.7

Question

After the upgrade I was getting the error:

Fatal error: Call to a member function getSize() on a non-object in ./app/design/frontend/base/default/template/catalog/product/list/toolbar.phtml on line 34

Offending line: <?php if($this->getCollection()->getSize()): ?>

After some quick debugging I found getCollection was returning null. As a workaround I manually set the collection:

$collection = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')->getCollection()
            ->addAttributeToSelect('*');
$this->setCollection($collection);

My question, why isn't the collection being set? Where would it normally be set?

Answer 1

The is normally set in the parent catalog/product_list block's _beforeToHtml method.

#File: app/code/core/Mage/Catalog/Block/Product/List.php
protected function _beforeToHtml()
{
    $toolbar = $this->getToolbarBlock();

    // called prepare sortable parameters
    $collection = $this->_getProductCollection();

    // use sortable parameters
    if ($orders = $this->getAvailableOrders()) {
        $toolbar->setAvailableOrders($orders);
    }
    if ($sort = $this->getSortBy()) {
        $toolbar->setDefaultOrder($sort);
    }
    if ($dir = $this->getDefaultDirection()) {
        $toolbar->setDefaultDirection($dir);
    }
    if ($modes = $this->getModes()) {
        $toolbar->setModes($modes);
    }

    // set collection to toolbar and apply sort
    $toolbar->setCollection($collection);

    $this->setChild('toolbar', $toolbar);
    Mage::dispatchEvent('catalog_block_product_list_collection', array(
        'collection' => $this->_getProductCollection()
    ));

    $this->_getProductCollection()->load();

    return parent::_beforeToHtml();
}

Specifically this line.

$toolbar->setCollection($collection);

My guess would be your system was heavily modified such that the toolbar block no longer had catalog/product_list as a parent.