How do I get categories for a product in Magento

Question

I\'m trying to add product_type to my Magento Google Base output based on the product\'s categories, but I seem to be unable to. I have the following code:

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Answer 1

Want to point out that the solution by @Rao is the best if you have a product object to get category ID's from as it makes only one SQL call.

If you just have category id's, you can do the following:

$categories = Mage::getModel('catalog/category')
    ->getCollection()
    ->addAttributeToSelect('name') //you can add more attributes using this
    ->addAttributeToFilter('entity_id', array('in'=>array(1,2,3)));

foreach($categories as $_cat){
    $holder[]= $_cat->getName();
}

Where array(1,2,3) are your categories. Note that the array has integers, not string values, I found that SQL can be picky about that.

Also wanted to point out that solutions pulling one category at a time are very inefficient as it makes an SQL call for every iteration of the loop e.g.:

foreach(..){
    Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->load($categoryId);
}