Magento 2 sort collection in particular order before display

Question

I am working in Magento 2.4.1. I need to sort the products on list page and search result page with particular order. I want to display particular products first in all page(list and search). I have custom attribute "Sort". It has two options "Normal" and "Priority". I want to display normal products first everytime in search and list page.

Any simple way to do that ?

I did it with following way in magento 2.3 and it is working well. But in magento 2.4 due to elastic search not working.

I created dynamic module in backend from there user can select category, attribute and set the position. So it will be dynamicaly set. This part does not matter as I tried by static way but still it is not working.

What I did :

di.xml

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<config xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="urn:magento:framework:ObjectManager/etc/config.xsd">
    <type name="Magento\Catalog\Model\Layer">
        <plugin name="vendor_afterplugin_model_layer" type="vendor\module\Plugin\Layer" sortOrder="3"  />
    </type>
</config>

Layer.php

public function afterGetProductCollection(\Magento\Catalog\Model\Layer $subject, $result_main) {
        // Here I will get the current category and its attribute with position which admin set from backend module
        $objectManager = \Magento\Framework\App\ObjectManager::getInstance();
        $request = $objectManager->get('Magento\Framework\App\Request\Http');
        $_registry = $objectManager->get('\Magento\Framework\Registry');
        $category = $_registry->registry('current_category');
        if (empty($category)) {
            $current_category_id = 0;
        } else {
            $attr_code = $request->getParam('product_list_order');
            if (!isset($attr_code) || empty($attr_code)) {
                $attr_code = $category->getDefaultSortBy();
            }
            $current_category_id = $category->getId();
        }
        $resource = $objectManager->get('Magento\Framework\App\ResourceConnection');
        $connection = $resource->getConnection();
        $tableName = $resource->getTableName('blue42_category_attribute_sort');
        $sql = "Select * FROM " . $tableName . " where category_id=" . $current_category_id;
        $results = $connection->fetchAll($sql);

        $eavModel = $objectManager->create('Magento\Catalog\Model\ResourceModel\Eav\Attribute');

        if (!empty($results)) {
            foreach ($results as $key => $values) {
                $attr = $eavModel->load($values['attribute_id']);
                $attributeCode = $attr->getAttributeCode();
                if (empty($category)) {
                    $attr_code = $attributeCode;
                }
                if ($attr_code == $attributeCode) {
                    $option_value_json = $values['option_id'];
                    $option_value_array = json_decode($option_value_json, true);
                    asort($option_value_array);
                    $order = [];
                    foreach ($option_value_array as $key => $value) {
                        $order[] = $key;
                    }
                    array_push($order, "");
                    $new_array = $result_main->getData();
                    // sort the array based on position
                    if (isset($attr_code)) {
                        usort($new_array, function ($a, $b) use ($order, $attr_code) {
                            $pos_a = array_search($a[$attr_code], $order);
                            $pos_b = array_search($b[$attr_code], $order);
                            return $pos_a - $pos_b;
                        });
                        $id_order = [];
                        foreach ($new_array as $key => $value_id) {
                            $id_order[] = $value_id['entity_id'];
                        }
                        // reset and sort the collection
                        $result_main->getSelect()->reset(\Magento\Framework\DB\Select::ORDER);
                        $result_main->getSelect()->order(new \Zend_Db_Expr("FIELD(e.entity_id, " . implode(",", $id_order) . ")"));
                    }

                }
            }
        }
        return $result_main;
    }

Answer 1

This doesn't exactly answer your question. It won't help with search results. But I wonder, why don't you make use of the core Magento category product position field since you mention you have custom table that sets position on product level?

For example, here's a simple observer on event catalog_product_save_after that updates the position in each category of the product (based on stock status). Instead, you could set the $position by adding another method to get the data from your custom table or the custom sort order product attribute you mention (I assume a drop down?). Or you could make a cron job to update the category link position e.g. get a collection of updated products in last 24 hours.

public function __construct(
    \Magento\Catalog\Model\ResourceModel\Product\CategoryLink $categoryLink,
    \Magento\Catalog\Api\ProductRepositoryInterface $productRepository
) {
    $this->categoryLink = $categoryLink;
    $this->productRepository = $productRepository;
}

/**
 * @param Observer $observer
 * @return $this
 */
 public function execute(Observer $observer)
 {
   $productId = $observer->getEvent()->getProduct()->getId();
   $product = $this->productRepository->getById($productId);

   $quantityAndStockStatus = $product->getData('quantity_and_stock_status');

   if (isset($quantityAndStockStatus['is_in_stock'])
       && $quantityAndStockStatus['is_in_stock'] == true) {
       $position = 10;
   } else {
       $position = 999;
   }

   $categoryIds = $product->getCategoryIds();
   $categoryLinks = $this->categoryLink->getCategoryLinks($product, $categoryIds);

   foreach ($categoryLinks as $categoryLink) {
     if ($categoryLink['position'] == $position) {
       continue;
     }

     $data = [];
     $data[] = [
       'category_id' => (int)$categoryLink['category_id'],
       'product_id' => (int)$product->getId(),
       'position' => (int)$position,
     ];

     $this->categoryLink->updateCategoryLinks($product, $data);
   }
 }

I'm not sure on the best way to sort the results with elasticsearch, but I think the problem might be the afterGetProductCollection is too late as the data has already been returned from elasticsearch? The other thing I am thinking is that the data you want to sort by is not indexed by elasticsearch.