Displaying Specific Magento Categories From Category ID

Question

As of yet, I haven't managed to find anything online that already caters for what I'm trying to achieve. I simply want to call in specific categories to a list but I want to be able to define which categories by ID, so for example, I would like to be able to call them in like something such as the below:-

{{block type="catalog/navigation" name="catalog.category" template="developer/extension/script.phtml" ids="3,6,17,143,57"}}

I'm already displaying a list of sub categories in various places based on the parent category ID but in instances where there are hundreds of sub categories, it isn't always practical to display all of them, so I'm wondering if the existing script can possibly be tweaked to only include specific categories as per above?

<?php
//gets all sub categories of parent category 'cat-id-4'
   $cats = Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->load(4)->getChildren();
   $catIds = explode(',',$cats);

   $categories = array();
foreach($catIds as $catId) {
    $category = Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->load($catId); 
    $categories[$category->getName()] = array(
        'url' => $category->getUrl(),
        'img' => $category->getImageUrl()
    );
}

ksort($categories, SORT_STRING);
?>
<ul>
    <?php if($category->getIsActive()): ?>
    <?php foreach($categories as $name => $data): ?>
        <li>
            <a href="<?php echo $data['url']; ?>" title="<?php echo     $name; ?>" alt="<?php echo $name; ?>"><?php echo $name; ?></a>
        </li>   
    <?php endforeach; ?>
    <?php endif; ?>
</ul>

If anyone could advise how I could possibly achieve this please, that would be fantastic - Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

This should work with your given CMS block code:

<?php
$catIds = explode(',', $this->getIds()); //<-- ONLY CHANGE MADE

$categories = array();
foreach($catIds as $catId) {
    $category = Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->load($catId); 
    $categories[$category->getName()] = array(
        'url' => $category->getUrl(),
        'img' => $category->getImageUrl()
    );
}

ksort($categories, SORT_STRING);
?>
<ul>
    <?php if($category->getIsActive()): ?>
    <?php foreach($categories as $name => $data): ?>
        <li>
            <a href="<?php echo $data['url']; ?>" title="<?php echo $name; ?>" alt="<?php echo $name; ?>"><?php echo $name; ?></a>
        </li>   
    <?php endforeach; ?>
    <?php endif; ?>
</ul>