Magento add new attribute options programatically and return the option id

Insert attribute option and return option id in Magento 1.x

This article presents three methods to add attribute options in a loop and return the inserted option_id correctly.

If you do this in a loop to add the options, you may find out that if you just try to getOptionId($value) on the attribute will return the option_id correctly only for the first inserted option, the others returning null and actually whole getAllOptions() will return an invalid options array.

Side note – what is the difference between option_id and value_id ?

There may be a lot of confusion around attributes option_id, option, value, value_id, label.

label vs title -vs- option vs value

• Because attributes are using the ‘label’ term for the attribute title on each store, most dev’s are also using the term label when referring to attribute option values.
• in the backend, it’s named ‘option’. option value represents the value per store for the option. These are found in the backend, under “Manage Options (values of your attribute)”
• in the database, it’s stored in a field named ‘value’

option_id vs value_id

There are two tables keeping the options:

• eav_attribute_option
• eav_attribute_option_value

Because Magento allows setting different values per store, value_id is the unique identifier of each store value. So for every unique option_id, there can be multiple value_id’s assigned to it, each assigned to a store_id.

The methods

ini_set('display_errors', 1);
require_once 'app/Mage.php';
Mage::app();

$attributeCode = 'mydropdown';
$attributeValues = array('a', 'b', 'c');

foreach ($attributeValues as $attributeValue) {

    //choose one method and comment the other ones

    ///--------------------METHOD 1 - failsafe

    //add the new option
    $attribute = Mage::getModel('eav/entity_attribute')->loadByCode('catalog_product', $attributeCode);
    $value['option'] = array($attributeValue);
    $result = array('value' => $value);
    //$attribute->setData('option', $result);
    $attribute->setData('option', $result);
    $attribute->save();

    //get its option_id
    $optionId = Mage::getModel('eav/entity_attribute_source_table')
        ->setAttribute($attribute)
        ->getOptionId($attributeValue);

    var_dump($optionId);


    ///--------------------METHOD 2 - to be retested as it may fail
    //add the new option
    $attribute = Mage::getModel('eav/entity_attribute')->loadByCode('catalog_product', $attributeCode);
    $value['option'] = array($attributeValue);
    $result = array('value' => $value);
    //$attribute->setData('option', $result);
    $attribute->setData('option', $result);
    $attribute->save();

    //get option id, don't reuse $attribute, use $attr for some reason to be uncovered
    $attr = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')->getResource()->getAttribute($attributeCode);
    $optionId = null;
    if ($attr->usesSource()) {
        $optionId = $attr->getSource() //returns Mage_Eav_Model_Entity_Attribute_Source_Table and does setAttribute()
        ->getOptionId($attributeValue);
    }

    var_dump($optionId);


    ///--------------------METHOD 3 - fastest
    //add the new option
    $attribute = Mage::getModel('eav/entity_attribute')->loadByCode('catalog_product', $attributeCode);
    $option['attribute_id'] = $attribute->getId();
    $option['value']['option'][0] = $attributeValue;
    $setup = new Mage_Eav_Model_Entity_Setup('core_setup');
    $setup->addAttributeOption($option);
    //get its option_id
    $valueId = $setup->getConnection()->lastInsertId();
    $optionId = Mage::getModel('eav/entity_attribute_option')
        ->getCollection()
        ->setStoreFilter(0)
        ->addFieldToFilter('tsv.value_id', array('eq' => $valueId))
        ->getFirstItem()->getId();

    var_dump($optionId);

}