where does magento serialize the value of product_options in sales_flat_order_item

Question

in my magento install, all products are configurable products where the size is the super attribute, a while ago i was naming the products [PRODUCT_CODE] - [COLOUR], like 999MBELT - Black however this would have the colour displace twice as the colour attribute was in the product description and was told to remove it

i have now been tasked with fixing the invoices by including what colour a product is, i know how to do this, i just have to edit the serialized string in sales_flat_order_item.product_options and change

s:15:"attributes_info";a:1:{i:0;a:2:{s:5:"label";s:4:"Size";s:5:"value";s:2:"58";}

to something like this

s:15:"attributes_info";a:2:{i:0;a:2:{s:5:"label";s:4:"Size";s:5:"value";s:2:"58";}i:1;a:2:{s:5:"label";s:6:"Colour";s:5:"value";s:10:"Dark Brown";}}

now i know how i'm going to go about doing this, the problem is that i can't find out where to put my code

so i'm wondering, where does magento serialize the original array and store in in sales_flat_order_item

Answer 1

found it, at least where it works for me, in app\code\core\Mage\Sales\Model\Convert\Quote.php there is a line $orderItem->setProductOptions($options);, in setProductOptions or in a function called by setProductOptions is where it serializes the data so all i needed to do was array_push into $options['attributes_info']

this is useful if you want to add other attributes like material only as a cosmetic thing for orders