PHP 8: Fix cannot remove category on admin product edit categories tab

[iamniels]

Description (*)

On PHP 8.0, ids in the category tree JSON are rendered as integers instead of as strings on previous PHP versions. Whether this has something to do with Mage_Adminhtml_Block_Catalog_Category_Tree::_getNodeJson, with Zend_Json::encode or with json_encode is unknown to me and not relevant for this PR and worth another discussion.

The issue fixed in this PR is that with PHP 8.0+ a product cannot be removed from categories in the categories tab of the product edit view. This is because the ids in the JSON provided by Magento to populate the categories tree (with bildCategoryTree) are integers instead of strings previously. The JS function categoryRemove() in categories.phtml can only handle ids as strings.

The best solution imho is to make categoryRemove() a bit more robust and support both integers and strings.

Manual testing scenario of solved issue

1. Go to categories tree in product edit view and deselect a checkbox.
2. Save product
3. Category checkbox is selected again.

[elidrissidev]

This seems to be related to the database adapter. If you try getting the Id field of any model it will return a string pre-PHP 8 and an integer starting from PHP 8.

[fballiano]

This seems to be related to the database adapter. If you try getting the Id field of any model it will return a string pre-PHP 8 and an integer starting from PHP 8.

yes but ''+id doesn't seem very easy to understand, i'd use id.toString() if possible

[elidrissidev]

Agreed

[fballiano]

@iamniels can you give a test to the version I pushed? hope it's fine :-)

[Sdfendor]

@elidrissidev

string pre-PHP 8 and an integer starting from PHP 8.

I made the same observation but the change e.g. with ID (integer) data from the database adapter, happened with PHP 8.1, in PHP 8.0 the DB delivers still string. We have code in our shops in place to take that into account since we frist tried out OM with PHP 8.1.

[elidrissidev]

@Sdfendor You must be right then as I only tested this with 7.4 and 8.1

[elidrissidev]

Works well