How to get a category listing from Magento?

Question

I want to create a page in Magento that shows a visual representation of the categories.. example

CATEGORY
 product 1
 product 2

ANOTHER CATEGORY
 product 3
         


        

Answer 1

Here's a quick example

$categories = Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->getCollection()  
    ->addAttributeToSelect('name')
    ->addAttributeToSelect('url_key')
    ->addAttributeToSelect('my_attribute')
    ->setLoadProductCount(true)
    ->addAttributeToFilter('is_active',array('eq'=>true))
    ->load();