Where does ZC pull the products in a category from database?

Hi, I have a most vexing problem.

I want to display the products in totally random order. Every time they refresh, I want it to show totally different products. I am selling t-shirts and bumper stickers, and I really don't want it showing the same few products at the top every time.

I hate to bother the forum, but I have spent HOURS digging through the guts of ZC, grep'ping for every vaguely related term, etc.

I thought it would be so easy - just find the SQL statement where it grabs the products to display, add an 'order by rand()' to the end of it, presto!

But I just can't find this SQL statement ANYWHERE!! It is driving me bananas.

I thought, for instance, it would be in /includes/classes/db/mysql/define_queries.php. But it doesn't seem to be. I also looked through all the core files, the function defines, the default template, the template I am using, etc. etc. I just don't know where else to look.

Could someone please enlighten me as to where this logic might reside?

Thank you!
Sasha Shepherd

Exactly which display component are you referring to? Are you talking about a "featured products" box? or a "specials" box? or the product-listing within each category? Are you saying you wish to completely ignore the customer's sort-preference selected in the pulldown? and ignore the default sort-order you've set within your admin?

Ah! I cracked it!!!!

/includes/index_filters/default_filter.php

I sure didn't think to look in that folder :(

I just did a search in the file for everyhting that said '$sql_listing .='

Commented all of it out.

Then, wrote a single statement:

$listing_sql .= " order by rand()";

That solved it. Now all products display in random order :)

Basically, in every category view, I wanted to totally ignore any sort preferences (my template disabled them for the customer anyway), and ONLY do random. It worked a charm :)