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[Linda24]

I am new to virtuemart. Although I added my child products (parent = album cd, child = tracks) in order of track number, the ordering goes all funny when I try to assign the child product to the song the customer will be downloading. How do you manage the order of child products?

[robiw]

Have exactly the same problem with ordering the display of child products.

The child products were all entered in proper order of increasing size and the item id's are all consecutive. Products have varying nos of children from 2-8.

It's not so bad at the lower end but when 8 options are shown and customer has to search for the size from a list that follows no logic it is a serious usability problem.

Is there any sort of workaround?

--- RobiW

[3by400, Inc.]

Same problem here. I've tried controlling by order enter, SKU, and naming convention (alphabetical), but to no avail!

Please help!

Thanks,
Beth

[samoht]

I am having the same issue,

I solved it once with a hack - but now I cant remember where. What we need to do is find the query for the child products and add 'ORDER BY field_to_orderby; to the end.

Anybody have an idea where this query might be??

[samoht]

ok,

I found what I was looking for and maybe it will help some of you.

in ps_product_attribute.php in the function list_attribute_drop after you see:
      

// Get list of children

then the sql query is there change from:

$q = "SELECT product_id,product_name FROM #__{vm}_product WHERE product_parent_id='$product_id' AND product_publish='Y'" ;

to:

$q = "SELECT product_id,product_name FROM #__{vm}_product WHERE product_parent_id='$product_id' AND product_publish='Y' Order By product_sku" ;

the last part is the important one - I set mine to product_sku because it makes adding and deleting easier to not mess up the order. Only problem is that this is a hack of the core code so if you do an update you will lose this! - So remember where it is : )

[haastyle]

I want to be able to order it in anyway I want to. Right now on my page it puts the sizes all weird.
X-Large
Medium
Large
Small

I'd like to put that a nice order without have to edit my skus.  Right now the skus are like this T001XL, T001L, T001M, T001S.  If I were to order it by sku I would have to rename all the skus.

[samoht]

sku numbers dont have to make sense to everyone just you. If you 'Order by' sku number then that's exactly what you'll get - you can order by any of your fields on the table. If you have access to phpMyAdmin for the table you can even add a field called order then put your order in there. The problem would be not being able to update from the VM administration panel.

why not try sku's like: T001XL, T002L, T003M, T004S - this will give you the order you want? or if the 001 is something you desperately want to keep in your sku #'s then try: T0011XL, T0012L etc - you can even put a dash in your sku (e.g. T001-1-XL)

[haastyle]

alright i did that code edit, hopefully they will add this an update

[Invisible Inc]

Thanks for the ideas on this. Problem solved. Just ask Martin!

[lrawling]

This solution didn't work for me as I have different display setups. Where I have a list order it worked beautifully but where the child products are listed in a dropdown box the dropdown box no longer appeared (only the qty and add to cart button).

Invisible Inc, who is Martin? Does he have a different solution?

Cheers,

Liz

[Andrew]

This doesn't seem to work for me either. I have products with 2 child attributes, such as ABC-2, ABC-4, ABC-6...etc up to 14. But it displays in a very strange order (14, 2, 4, 10, 12, 6, . I have tried the ORDER BY product_sku suggestion, but it did nothing. Anybody got any other ideas?

[slappadudle]

Thanks for the ideas on this. Problem solved. Just ask Martin!

Who's Martin? How did you resolve this issue? I tried the code entries above and they did nothing. I have been pulling my hair out for weeks trying to solve this one. It seems any solutions I find work for some people but not others and NOT ME!

[macallf]

OK, I have been away! But since some one pm'd me I thought I had better give some insight into this.

ps_product_attribute.php has 2 routines for displaying child products.

1. for dropdown:
   function list_attribute_drop( $product_id, $cls_suffix ) {

2. for list with one add to cart button and 1 add to cart button for each child:
   function list_attribute_list( $product_id, $display_use_parent, $child_link, $display_type, $cls_sfuffix, $child_ids, $dw, $aw, $display_header, $product_list_type, $product_list ) {

There is a third, but that is still in development and is as such not used!

If you altering the sql's then you have to alter the correct one or ones that you are using. It is as easy as adding an ORDER_BY and then the field at the end of the sql's.

Now to ordering by size, sql orders either numerically or alphabetically. s, m, l, xl will never get sorted correctly because it is not alphanumerically sortable!

It will always come out l, m, s, xl or xl, s, m, l. Thats why using a recognised SKU that can be sorted. eg. prod_1_alt_1, prod_1_alt_2 etc these, e.g. would refer to the small and medium sizes and would always be sorted correctly.

I hope this explains and helps.

[bulesz]

ACE! thanks!

[EquiProVM]

could you give an example as to how to do this (the correct text, for example).  I have found the code in the ps_product_attribute.php that you are discussing and I would like to have the children listed by the product_id.  What would I add to the code to have it do this, and where?

This is what I think I found in the ps_product_attribute.php file (hopefully this is the right place):

return $this->list_attribute_list( $product_id, $display_use_parent, $product_list_child, $display_type, $class_suffix, $child_option_ids, $dw, $aw, $display_header, $product_list_type, $product_list ) ;
         break ;
         case "YM" :
            return $this->list_attribute_list( $product_id, $display_use_parent, $product_list_child, $display_type, $class_suffix, $child_option_ids, $dw, $aw, $display_header, $product_list_type, $product_list ) ;
         break ;
         case "N" :
         default :
            return $this->list_attribute_drop( $product_id, $class_suffix ) ;
         break ;


This is a pretty complex code in this file (for me, anyway).  I definitely don't want to screw things up.  If someone could show me the EXACT way to have it order by product_id OR by SKU, that would be so great because I would almost be done with my site.  Keep in mind that I'm VERY inept with code, so you can't be too clear!  Thanks!