"Can't retrieve entity config: catalog/product_link_attribute_" while full index for products

[Ewald]

If I run php shell/vsf_tools.php --action full_reindex --action full_reindex --store 1 --type products the following exception is thrown:

PHP Fatal error:  Uncaught Mage_Core_Exception: Can't retrieve entity config: catalog/product_link_attribute_ in /var/www/magento/public/app/Mage.php:598
Stack trace:
#0 /var/www/magento/public/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Model/Resource.php(282): Mage::throwException('Can't retrieve ...')
#1 /var/www/magento/public/app/code/community/Divante/VueStorefrontIndexer/Model/Resource/Catalog/Product/Links.php(192): Mage_Core_Model_Resource->getTableName('catalog/product...')
#2 /var/www/magento/public/app/code/community/Divante/VueStorefrontIndexer/Model/Resource/Catalog/Product/Links.php(172): Divante_VueStorefrontIndexer_Model_Resource_Catalog_Product_Links->joinPositionAttribute(Object(Varien_Db_Select))
#3 /var/www/magento/public/app/code/community/Divante/VueStorefrontIndexer/Model/Resource/Catalog/Product/Links.php(129): Divante_VueStorefrontIndexer_Model_Resource_Catalog_Product_Links->prepareLinksSelect()
#4 /var/www/magento/public/app/code/community/Divante/VueStorefrontIndexer/Model/Resource/Catalog/Product/Links.php(85): Divan in /var/www/magento/public/app/Mage.php on line 598

Reason:
I found out that this happens because our catalog_product_link_attribute table is empty and the select is return false instead of an array in class method Divante_VueStorefrontIndexer_Model_Resource_Catalog_Product_Links::fetchPositionAttributeData() (line 209-220, source link).

Solution
I changed the class method joinPositionAttribute() to continue if an empty array is returned by fetchPositionAttributeData():

    /**
     * @param Varien_Db_Select $select
     *
     * @return Varien_Db_Select
     */
    private function joinPositionAttribute(Varien_Db_Select $select)
    {
        $alias = 'link_position';
        $attributePosition = $this->fetchPositionAttributeData();

        if (empty($attributePosition)) {
            return $select;
        }

        $table = $this->resource->getTableName($this->getAttributeTypeTable($attributePosition['type']));

        $joinCondition = [
            "{$alias}.link_id = links.link_id",
            $this->connection->quoteInto(
                "{$alias}.product_link_attribute_id = ?",
                $attributePosition['id']
            ),
        ];

        $select->joinLeft(
            array($alias => $table),
            implode(' AND ', $joinCondition),
            array($attributePosition['code'] => 'value')
        );

        return $select;
    }

Maybe this should be considered in the code by default if somebody isn't using upsell- or crosssell-products.

[Piotr Karwatka]

Thanks for pointing this out! Can You propose a PR with this change please?

[afirlejczyk]

@cewald thank you for pull request
@pkarw
In a clean Magento installation, this table is not empty..
I will double check this. For now, I found Magento data installer which is adding data to this table.
But sure, the error shouldn't appear at all :)

[Ewald]

@afirlejczyk Alright. As i know these tables are used to save "non-eav" product relations like cross-sell, up-sell or grouped products – if you don't have them in use, this tables are empty. But if you use the sample data of magento, there will be sample data in this tables after installation. I double checked it with a plain installation with sample data. But it's definitely good to be sure ;)