Magento - Get product items attribute in view.phtml - magento

Question

I am trying to load a custom category in the catalog/category/view.phtml to archive this I use:
<?php
$_category = Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->load(47);
$_productCollection = $_category->getProductCollection();
if($_productCollection->count()) {
foreach( $_productCollection as $_product ):
echo $_product->getProductUrl();
echo $this->getPriceHtml($_product, true);
echo $this->htmlEscape($_product->getName());
endforeach;
}
?>
I can load the URL for example, now I want to load a custom attribute for example color:
$_product->getResource()->getAttribute('color')->getFrontend()->getValue($_product)
This code does not work, I am 100% sure the color attribute is set to show in the category listing and also that the items in this category have this fields fill. I know this because this code works on list.html.
What I am doing wrong? I am working with 1.7.0.2.
The expected result is to show all COLOR attibutes from a custom cateogory in
catalog/category/view.phtml

Answer 1

I can't believe I just found the answer. Because we are not in a regular category listing we need to add the custom attributes to the collection.
Here is the code:
$_productCollection = $_category->getProductCollection()
->addAttributeToSelect('color');

Answer 2

If "color" is in the flat table you should be able to
$_product->getColor();
If this attribute is not in the collection, you can either add it to the flat table by making the attribute filterable, add it in the PHP collection call
$_productCollection = $_category->getProductCollection()
->addAttributeToSelect('color');
Or load the product model to get all of the attributes
$_product = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')->load($_product->getId());
echo $_product->getColor();

Answer 3

Make this attribute visible in listing/frontend
Run Reindexing
foreach( $_productCollection as $_product ):
echo $_product->getProductUrl();
in this code var_dump $_product->getData(); check if this var_dump results in that specific attribute value getting displayed.
Note:
$_product->getResource()->getAttribute('color')->getFrontend()->getValue($_product)
is not a very efficient way of calling.