Display Order Problem - Product Info Pages

[philip937]

Hi All,

I have changed my product listing order for my category listing pages so that it orders my sort number and quantity.

I changed the file

/includes/index_filters/default_filter.php

and changed a line in here to be:

$listing_sql .= " order by p.products_sort_order, p.products_quantity desc";

the problem I seem to have now is that if a customer clicks on the first product in the category listing, then from within the product info page clicks "next" i.e to view the next product, instead of showing the next product in the category list its showing a diffeent one completely? (I think I might be going in alphabetical order)..

Where can I look to ensure the next previous will marry up with the order of products displayed in the listings?

Many Thanks

Phil

[ToniScraparoni]

I've done some custom search "magic" at my store and realized when I read your post that you were absolutely right - the prev/next display always defaults to alphabetical display, even if that wasn't the requested listing order. Hadn't noticed that! Thank you for pointing it out. Now to see about fixing it.

The three files that work together on the mechanics of this are, as you've found,

includes/index_filters/default_filter.php
includes/modules/product_listing_alpha_sorter.php
includes/modules/product_prev_next.php

All three of these should be in an override directory. The adjusted files would go into the following, where your_template would be changed to the name of your actual template.

includes/index_filters/your_template/default_filter.php
includes/modules/your_template/product_listing_alpha_sorter.php
includes/modules/your_template/product_prev_next.php

That said, you've already added your custom search criteria to default_filter.php. Good job! product_listing_alpha_sorter.php is for the dropdown menu display, to show what criteria the results are appearing by. Let me know if you'd care to change that and I'll show you how I did mine.

The part that gave me trouble was getting the prev/next display to recognize the requested sort order. The default is alphabetical, and it's used in a switch case along with the rest of the order by options. Mine refused to switch no matter what I did, even if I removed the order by text from the query altogether - it still displayed in alphabetical order. I was able to get around this by starting a session in default_filter.php to pick up the order by text from either the user requested or default landing display.

Seems to work great here. Let's see if it will work for you, too!

In 1.3.9h, the core default_filter.php file contains the following block of code at approx. lines 21 - 25:

if (isset($_GET['alpha_filter_id']) && (int)$_GET['alpha_filter_id'] > 0) {
    $alpha_sort = " and pd.products_name LIKE '" . chr((int)$_GET['alpha_filter_id']) . "%' ";
  } else {
    $alpha_sort = '';
  } 

You've probably added some additional lines for your preferred search criteria.

Add the following immediately afterwards:

// BOF ADJUST PREV/NEXT SORT ORDER DISPLAY
session_start();
$_SESSION['sort_order'] = $alpha_sort;
// EOF ADJUST PREV/NEXT SORT ORDER DISPLAY 

Next, in product_prev_next.php, the core file from 1.3.9h contains the following block of code at approx. lines 70 - 75:

$sql = "select p.products_id, p.products_model, p.products_price_sorter, pd.products_name, p.products_sort_order
          from   " . TABLE_PRODUCTS . " p, "
  . TABLE_PRODUCTS_DESCRIPTION . " pd, "
  . TABLE_PRODUCTS_TO_CATEGORIES . " ptc
          where  p.products_status = '1' and p.products_id = pd.products_id and pd.language_id= '" . (int)$_SESSION['languages_id'] . "' and p.products_id = ptc.products_id and ptc.categories_id = '" . (int)$current_category_id . "'" .
  $prev_next_order; 

Change this to:

// BOF ADJUST PREV/NEXT SORT ORDER DISPLAY
  $sql = "select p.products_id, p.products_model, p.products_price_sorter, pd.products_name, p.products_sort_order, p.products_date_added
from   " . TABLE_PRODUCTS . " p,
" . TABLE_PRODUCTS_DESCRIPTION . " pd,
" . TABLE_PRODUCTS_TO_CATEGORIES . " ptc
where  p.products_status = '1'
and p.products_id = pd.products_id
and pd.language_id= '" . (int)$_SESSION['languages_id'] . "'
and p.products_id = ptc.products_id
and ptc.categories_id = '" . (int)$current_category_id . "'
" . $_SESSION['sort_order'];
// EOF ADJUST PREV/NEXT SORT ORDER DISPLAY 

That should do it. Hope this helps! :)

[ToniScraparoni]

Replying again to say I just realized you're using a different variable than I am to set your order by options. Change the session to use yours, or change your order by text to use $alpha_sort. Either way should work.

[philip937]

I've done some custom search "magic" at my store and realized when I read your post that you were absolutely right - the prev/next display always defaults to alphabetical display, even if that wasn't the requested listing order. Hadn't noticed that! Thank you for pointing it out. Now to see about fixing it.

The three files that work together on the mechanics of this are, as you've found,

includes/index_filters/default_filter.php
includes/modules/product_listing_alpha_sorter.php
includes/modules/product_prev_next.php

All three of these should be in an override directory. The adjusted files would go into the following, where your_template would be changed to the name of your actual template.

includes/index_filters/your_template/default_filter.php
includes/modules/your_template/product_listing_alpha_sorter.php
includes/modules/your_template/product_prev_next.php

That said, you've already added your custom search criteria to default_filter.php. Good job! product_listing_alpha_sorter.php is for the dropdown menu display, to show what criteria the results are appearing by. Let me know if you'd care to change that and I'll show you how I did mine.

The part that gave me trouble was getting the prev/next display to recognize the requested sort order. The default is alphabetical, and it's used in a switch case along with the rest of the order by options. Mine refused to switch no matter what I did, even if I removed the order by text from the query altogether - it still displayed in alphabetical order. I was able to get around this by starting a session in default_filter.php to pick up the order by text from either the user requested or default landing display.

Seems to work great here. Let's see if it will work for you, too!

In 1.3.9h, the core default_filter.php file contains the following block of code at approx. lines 21 - 25:

if (isset($_GET['alpha_filter_id']) && (int)$_GET['alpha_filter_id'] > 0) {
    $alpha_sort = " and pd.products_name LIKE '" . chr((int)$_GET['alpha_filter_id']) . "%' ";
  } else {
    $alpha_sort = '';
  } 

You've probably added some additional lines for your preferred search criteria.

Add the following immediately afterwards:

// BOF ADJUST PREV/NEXT SORT ORDER DISPLAY
session_start();
$_SESSION['sort_order'] = $alpha_sort;
// EOF ADJUST PREV/NEXT SORT ORDER DISPLAY 

Next, in product_prev_next.php, the core file from 1.3.9h contains the following block of code at approx. lines 70 - 75:

$sql = "select p.products_id, p.products_model, p.products_price_sorter, pd.products_name, p.products_sort_order
          from   " . TABLE_PRODUCTS . " p, "
  . TABLE_PRODUCTS_DESCRIPTION . " pd, "
  . TABLE_PRODUCTS_TO_CATEGORIES . " ptc
          where  p.products_status = '1' and p.products_id = pd.products_id and pd.language_id= '" . (int)$_SESSION['languages_id'] . "' and p.products_id = ptc.products_id and ptc.categories_id = '" . (int)$current_category_id . "'" .
  $prev_next_order; 

Change this to:

// BOF ADJUST PREV/NEXT SORT ORDER DISPLAY
  $sql = "select p.products_id, p.products_model, p.products_price_sorter, pd.products_name, p.products_sort_order, p.products_date_added
from   " . TABLE_PRODUCTS . " p,
" . TABLE_PRODUCTS_DESCRIPTION . " pd,
" . TABLE_PRODUCTS_TO_CATEGORIES . " ptc
where  p.products_status = '1'
and p.products_id = pd.products_id
and pd.language_id= '" . (int)$_SESSION['languages_id'] . "'
and p.products_id = ptc.products_id
and ptc.categories_id = '" . (int)$current_category_id . "'
" . $_SESSION['sort_order'];
// EOF ADJUST PREV/NEXT SORT ORDER DISPLAY 

That should do it. Hope this helps! :)

bear with me.. trying to get my head around what this is doing..

[ToniScraparoni]

LOL, Philip!

You might want to take some more time, actually. The fix works great mechanically, but its throwing a debug error I can't seem to narrow down about a completely unrelated - and untouched - file. The error doesn't seem to affect how anything works, it's just annoying to clear the logs. I'll let you know when I figure it out.

Also, I should take back what I said about interchanging the session variables. I posted before noticing the join operand in your variable. You'd wipe out the preceding part of the related queries if you were to use yours, so you'd have to change your variable to $alpha_sort or something else. Guess it's my way or the highway! LOL! ;)

[philip937]

LOL, Philip!

You might want to take some more time, actually. The fix works great mechanically, but its throwing a debug error I can't seem to narrow down about a completely unrelated - and untouched - file. The error doesn't seem to affect how anything works, it's just annoying to clear the logs. I'll let you know when I figure it out.

Also, I should take back what I said about interchanging the session variables. I posted before noticing the join operand in your variable. You'd wipe out the preceding part of the related queries if you were to use yours, so you'd have to change your variable to $alpha_sort or something else. Guess it's my way or the highway! LOL! ;)

haha thanks for the update! - I think I can live with it for now as annoying as it is, im pretty sure joe bloggs doesnt usually browse my products using the next and previous buttons anyway :o)

[ToniScraparoni]

An update on this. I never did figure out what about these "modified sort" additions was throwing the debug error in includes/classes/category_tree.php, specifically referencing a call to a member function on a non-object on line 68. No changes had been made in that file. I went over the files I did change endlessly but couldn't find anything wrong. So, I wound up changing category_tree.php instead. ;)

The error referenced line 68, but for me, the fix was on line 52. Line 52 used to be:

while (!$categories->EOF)  { 

Now it's this:

while ($categories->EOF === false) { 

After making that change, Supertracker decided to be ornery, giving the same "member function on a non-object" nonsense in its class file, includes/classes/supertracker.php. That one referenced line 100, then required a similar change on line 129. Those are as follows:

Line 100 used to be:

if ($_SESSION['cart']->count_contents() > 0) { 

Line 100 now:

if (!empty($_SESSION['cart']->contents)) { 

Line 129 original code:

if ($_SESSION['cart']->count_contents() > 0) $tracking_data->fields['added_cart'] = 'true'; 

The new line 129:

if (!empty($_SESSION['cart']->contents)) $tracking_data->fields['added_cart'] = 'true'; 

This seems to have solved the debug problem. Supertracker appears to function properly and the cache has been blissfully clear. Woo! :)