Magento 2 – Extending Catalog Module Class Not Working

I am working on a module that is meant to extend MagentoCatalogModelCategory in order to get the thumbnail URL. I based the code on getImageUrl in the base class.

I have my main Model file CategoryThumbnail.php:

< ?php
namespace ModuleCategoryThumbnailModel;

use MagentoAuthorizationModelUserContextInterface;
use MagentoCatalogApiCategoryRepositoryInterface;
use MagentoCatalogApiDataCategoryInterface;
use MagentoCatalogUrlRewriteModelCategoryUrlRewriteGenerator;
use MagentoFrameworkApiAttributeValueFactory;
use MagentoFrameworkAppObjectManager;
use MagentoFrameworkAuthorizationInterface;
use MagentoFrameworkConvertConvertArray;
use MagentoFrameworkExceptionNoSuchEntityException;
use MagentoFrameworkProfiler;
use MagentoUrlRewriteModelUrlFinderInterface;
use MagentoUrlRewriteServiceV1DataUrlRewrite;
use MagentoCatalogModelCategory;

class CategoryThumbnail extends MagentoCatalogModelCategory {
    /**
     * Returns image url
     *
     * @param string $attributeCode
     * @return bool|string
     * @throws MagentoFrameworkExceptionLocalizedException
     */
    public function getThumbnail($attributeCode = 'thumbnail')
    {
        $url = false;
        $image = $this->getData($attributeCode);
        if ($image) {
            if (is_string($image)) {
                $store = $this->_storeManager->getStore();

                $isRelativeUrl = substr($image, 0, 1) === '/';

                $mediaBaseUrl = $store->getBaseUrl(
                    MagentoFrameworkUrlInterface::URL_TYPE_MEDIA
                );

                if ($isRelativeUrl) {
                    $url = $image;
                } else {
                    $url = $mediaBaseUrl
                        . ltrim(MagentoCatalogModelCategoryFileInfo::ENTITY_MEDIA_PATH, '/')
                        . '/'
                        . $image;
                }
            } else {
                throw new MagentoFrameworkExceptionLocalizedException(
                    __('Something went wrong while getting the image url.')
                );
            }
        }
        return $url;
    }
}

And I have this template extension in the Block folder Thumbnail.php:

< ?php
namespace ModuleCategoryThumbnailBlock;

class Thumbnail extends MagentoFrameworkViewElementTemplate
{
    protected $thumbnail;

    /**
     * @param MagentoFrameworkViewElementTemplateContext $context
     * @param ModuleCategoryThumbnailModelCategoryThumbnail $thumbnail
     * array $data
     */
    public function __construct(
        MagentoFrameworkViewElementTemplateContext $context,
        ModuleCategoryThumbnailModelCategoryThumbnail $thumbnail,
        array $data = []
    ) {
        $this->thumbnail = $thumbnail;
        parent::__construct($context, $data);
    }

    public function getThumbnailUrl() {
        return $this->thumbnail->getThumbnail();
    }
}

Contents of di.xml and module.xml below:

< ?xml version="1.0" ?>


    
    

< ?xml version="1.0"?>


    
        
            
        
    

When I attempt to load the thumbnail URL with $block->getThumbnailUrl, I don’t get anything. I tried to echo it to the page by itself and using strval but still empty.

I cleaned and flushed the caches and ran rm -rf generated/ to ensure clean caches and no leftover code. Just for good measure, I also ran setup:di:compile and didn’t get any errors. I’ve clearly done something wrong but I’m not sure what since I don’t get any errors at any point. Just doesn’t work.