Get category pictures/thumbs from start page?

Does anybody know how to access category picture names from the start.tpl template?

I’m changing my start page (start.tpl) to include a list of all root categories along with a representative picture for each category. The pictures I’ll use are the ones uploaded for each category through the admin area (category thumbnail image). In trying to do this, I could not find anyway to access the picture names from start.tpl. I can access category fields through $oxcmp_categories (oxCategoryList), but the required OXTHUMB field is absent. At this point I assume there’s no way to get the OXTHUMB value from start.tpl under the default eshop implementation.

Does the solution below sound about right or could somebody recommend a better one?

I’m planning to extend the oxCategoryList class with a custom module. In particular, I’ll need to override the member function _getSqlSelectFieldsForTree to include the desired field (oxthumb) in it’s field listing for the SQL select query.

Regards.

Look here: http://www.musterdenker.de/2009/09/oxid-eshop-enable-lazy-loading-for-categories/

Thank you. That article takes the words right out of my mouth. With LazyLoading enabled, I’m able to access the thumbs now.