How to get products from a particular category in magento ecommerce

Question

I\'d like to get a list of random products from the same category as the current product for displaying within the product view - so far all I\'ve dug up is

Magento

Answer 1

You should instantiate a model by calling Mage::getModel('catalog/product') in this case because then you get a configured object instance, extended by any configured modules.

If you do it like new Mage_Catalog_Model_Product() this will ignore modules and bypass the Magento API.