In one of those time when you need to know what attributes of a product is used to make the current configurable product “configurable”, then here it goes 
Those configurable attributes are called as “Super Attributes”. Looking into the lower level at the Database level the attributes id are saved in the table “catalog_product_super_attribute”. In this configurable product’s Id and the attribute are saved. To get the attribute’s id you can directly write a custom query and fetch it. But to get its attribute code, attribute level you will then have to create an object attribute using the fetched id. But there is one shot option as well to do the same, in a managed Magento Way!
Here is the way. The code comments are self explanatory I guess!!
/**
* Load Product you want to get Super attributes of
*/
$product=Mage::getModel("catalog/product")->load(52520);
/**
* Get Configurable Type Product Instace and get Configurable attributes collection
*/
$configurableAttributeCollection=$product->getTypeInstance()->getConfigurableAttributes();
/**
* Use the collection to get the desired values of attribute
*/
foreach($configurableAttributeCollection as $attribute){
echo "Attr-Code:".$attribute->getProductAttribute()->getAttributeCode()."<br/>";
echo "Attr-Label:".$attribute->getProductAttribute()->getFrontend()->getLabel()."<br/>";
echo "Attr-Id:".$attribute->getProductAttribute()->getId()."<br/>";
}
Happy Codding!
Hi, I’m doing my best to customize a magento site and I am *very* interested in finding out how to locate class methods, etc. How do you find out all of the wonderful method calls that you use? Where do you look?
dave
All you have to do is drill down into the core classes from above and you will get all the functions you want
Also you will have to work for a while in Magento and “slam” you head into your desk time and again for getting the answer you want! 
Ooops, I guess I was slamming my head first… ;O)
Right now, I’m trying to automate some pricing updates from an external inventory system. When I update simple products that are associated with configurable products I need to also update the super attribute’s price. I have tried this: (ProductID 2937 is definitely configurable.)
$thisCfgableProd = Mage::getSingleton(‘catalog/Product’)->load(2937) ;
$cfgOptions = $thisCfgableProd->getTypeInstance(true) ;
$cfgOptionsAttr = $cfgOptions->getConfigurableAttributesAsArray($thisCfgableProd) ;
foreach ($cfgOptionsAttr as $attribute) {
if(attribIwant) $attribute['values'][x]['pricing_value'] = 150 ;
Mage::getResourceModel(‘catalog/Product_Type_Configurable_Attribute’)->savePrices($attribute) ;
}
savePrices dies right away doing
Call to a member function getValues() on a non-object in
…. Eav/Mysql4/Product/Type/Configurable/Attribute.php
I’ve been grinding at this for a couple of days now. I’m just about to update the database directly, but I would like to avoid that if I can.
Any suggestions would be *most* appreciated.
dave
Give me some time.. i’ll make another post for this.for creating configurable products programmatically. may be today!
That would go a *long* way to get me out of this problem. Thank you for taking the time to give this a look. dave
Well, thank you for the post regarding Eclipse. It gave me the courage to try to figure that out again and it is just what I needed! I’ve figured out how to do the configurable product price updates. In case anyone else is looking for a way to do that:
$productid = ’2937′ ;
$product = Mage::getSingleton(‘catalog/Product’)->load($productid);
$configurableAttributeData = $product->getTypeInstance()->getConfigurableAttributesAsArray($product) ;
foreach($configurableAttributeData as $attributeData){
// Update super attributes as required
$id = isset($attributeData['id']) ? $attributeData['id'] : null;
Mage::getModel(‘catalog/product_type_configurable_attribute’)
->setData($attributeData)
->setId($id)
->setStoreId($product->getStoreId())
->setProductId($productid)
->save();
}
hay i try this code but it give me an error
“FFatal error: Call to undefined method Mage_Bundle_Model_Product_Type::getConfigurableAttributes() ”
how can i solve it…
any idea….
I think you tried for bundled product not for configurable product.
@Dave… Thanks for the code… if it works
How about deleting some of the super attributes?
This seems even be impossible in the admin after setting it once for the configurable product.