How to add a new field in "Catalog > Products" admin page?

[OneMore]

Hi everyone,

My product titles are often long for fitting well in the frontend thumbnails.
I would like to split them in a shorter title and a subtitle.

So, I already added a "subtitle" column to the "product_descriptions" table, and for the admin side, edited "admin/model/catalog/product.php".

But how to add a "subtitle" field in "Catalog > Products" admin page?

I had a look at "admin/view/default/template/pages/catalog/product_list.tpl.", "admin/controller/common/listing_grid.php" and "admin/view/default/template/common/listing_grid.tpl".

I understand that jqGrid is used but could not find where the list of columns for the grid is being set.

Thank you for your help.

(N.B. I am aware of the existence of the blurb column, but I am planning using it for short product descriptions.)

[abolabo]

Hi,
The first thing you need to know about modifying the product grid is that AbanteCart uses several types of controllers.
The grid configuration itself is defined in the page controller — in your case, `catalog/product`.
This configuration is passed to the `common/listing_grid` controller, which renders the grid using jqGrid.

Right after loading, an AJAX request is sent to a response controller. You can find all the response controllers for grids under the `responses/listing_grid` path.

As you've probably guessed, at each stage of the code execution path, you can make changes to the controllers using our hook system.
Each controller has calls like `$this->extension->hk_InitData()` or `$this->extension->hk_UpdateData()` (there are actually more),
which allow you to modify public properties of the controller from a hook, both before and after execution.

So, to add a column, you need to modify the configuration before the `common/listing_grid` controller executes.
(The configuration data contains a `table_id`, so you can easily detect which grid is being called. In your case, it's `'table_id' == 'product_grid'`).

You'll also need to modify the response controller `listing_grid/product` to include `title` in the data list.
As an example, check the method `public function onControllerResponsesListingGridExtension_UpdateData()` from the `avatax_integration` extension.

It's best to work with Xdebug so you can see which data is available at each step.

For more details on how hooks work, refer to (https://abantecart.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/DOC/pages/17793156/Hooks]our documentation: