Ttdfjt

I have created a custom category attribute using this tutorial http://gauss-development.com/blog/tutorials/adding-custom-category-attributes-magento/.

<?php
$installer = $this;
$installer->startSetup();
$attribute = array(
 'type' => 'text',
 'label' => 'Extra Title',
 'input' => 'text',
 'global' => Mage_Catalog_Model_Resource_Eav_Attribute::SCOPE_GLOBAL,
 'visible' => true,
 'required' => false,
 'user_defined' => true,
 'default' => "",
 'group' => "General Information"
);
$installer->addAttribute('catalog_category', 'cat_extra_title', $attribute);
$installer->endSetup();
?>

I have checked that the attribute is stored in eav_attribute table normally, but I can't get it's value.

$category = Mage::registry('current_category');
if ($category)
 $value = $category->getData('cat_extra_title'); //value is empty

Any ideas?

After testing many possible solutions, this was the only one that worked for me:

$cat_extra_title = Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->load($category->getId())->getData('cat_extra_title');

when adding new attribute for Category or Product, we need to put this attribute in Attribute Set and Attribute Group.
So your code should look like this:

$installer->addAttribute('catalog_category', 'cat_extra_title', array(
 'type' => 'text',
 'label' => 'Extra Title',
 'input' => 'text',
 'global' => Mage_Catalog_Model_Resource_Eav_Attribute::SCOPE_GLOBAL,
 'required' => false,
 'default' => '',
 'user_defined' => true,
 'default' => "",
));
$entityTypeId = $installer->getEntityTypeId('catalog_category');
$attributeSetId = $installer->getDefaultAttributeSetId($entityTypeId);
$attributeGroupId = $installer->getDefaultAttributeGroupId($entityTypeId, $attributeSetId);
$installer->addAttributeToGroup(
 $entityTypeId,
 $attributeSetId,
 $attributeGroupId,
 'cat_extra_title'
);

I ran into the same issue today. I created a new custom category attribute (an int/select one), and I would try this, in list.phtml, and get an empty value:

$value = Mage::registry('current_category')->getData('my_custom_Attribute');

However, this was solved by re-indexing catalog_category_flat; with n98:

n98-magerun.phar index:reindex catalog_category_flat

Now, the same code produces the value, so long as a value exists for the category (if the value is empty/NULL, then, of course, it will still produce a NULL value).