Change all Categories in Magento to, Anchor is Yes, with 1 Click.

Often times there is a need to change all Magento Categories from their default setting of ‘Is Anchor = No’ to ‘Is Anchor=Yes’.  Making the change to an Anchor Category activates the Layered Navigation, also known as filtered navigation.  If you have multiple Categories this can be a time-consuming task to do manually.

The better way is to use the following code to run through and change all Categories to Anchor in just 1 Click.

*It is always a good idea before making changes to the database that you first create a database backup.  This has become very quick and easy using the Magento Admin.  To make your backup using Magento Admin, navigate to [System] [Tools] [Backups], once there select the option Database Backup (don’t worry it doesn’t take long).

Now that you are ready, create a new file called all2anchor.php and place it in the root of your Magento install (where your index.php file is).  In this new file paste the following:

 <?
error_reporting(E_ALL);
ini_set('display_errors', '1');

// Load Up Magento Core
define('MAGENTO', realpath(''));

require_once(MAGENTO . '/app/Mage.php');

$app = Mage::app();

$categories = Mage::getModel('catalog/category')
 ->getCollection()
 ->addAttributeToSelect('*')
 ->addAttributeToFilter('is_anchor', 0)
 ->addAttributeToFilter('entity_id', array("gt" => 1))
 ->setOrder('entity_id')
 ;

foreach($categories as $category) {
 echo $category->getId() . "\t" . $category->getName() . "\n";
 $category->setIsAnchor(1);
 $category->save();
}

After saving the file ‘all2anchor.php’ you can run it by using the address of your store followed by /all2anchor.php.  www.yourstore/all2anchor.php

That’s it you’re done!  Now remove this file and continue with developing your Magento store.