Workaround for attribute store labels not being displayed in Magento

Here’s a quick workaround for a rather strange issue – sometimes, calling $attribute->getStoreLabel() returns null, although everything looks fine in the admin and in the database. It might be something that is slipping my mind, or it might be a bug, not really sure. However, I had to deal with it and come up with a fix, so I’d thought I’d share.

$_aIds = array();
foreach( $prod->getAttributes() as $attribute ) {
	//need the attribute_id which is missing from the attribute object
	if( !isset($_aIds[$attribute->getAttributeCode()]) ) {
		$_aIds[$attribute->getAttributeCode()] = $attribute->getIdByCode('catalog_product', $attribute->getAttributeCode());
	}
			
	//if there's not store_label try to set it
	if( !$attribute->getStoreLabel() ) {
		$labels = $attribute->getResource()->getStoreLabelsByAttributeId( $_aIds[$attribute->getAttributeCode()] );
		if( array_key_exists(Mage::app()->getStore()->getStoreId(), $labels)) {
			$attribute->setStoreLabel( $labels[Mage::app()->getStore()->getStoreId()] );
		} 
		else {
			$attribute->setStoreLabel( $attribute->getFrontendLabel() );
		}
	}
}
// end workaround

Applies to Magento 1.5.x