How to set an attribute option's position per product?

Question

Is there any way to set an attribute option's position per product?

To clarify with a simple scenario, we sell blue shirts and pink shirts. For products in a women's category, we want the pink shirts first in the list, for men, we want blue.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Ok, solved this for us. Here's what I did.

First I created a textarea attribute (code: attribute_order_override) for configurable products to allow the content editors to enter a JSON snippet like this:

{
    "color": [
        "Athletic Grey", 
        "Athletic Blue"
    ]
}

Then in app/design/frontend/.../default/template/catalog/product/view/type/options/configurable.phtml. I created an "order reference array":

$orderReferenceArray = array();
$attributeOrderOverride = $_product->getResource()->getAttribute('attribute_order_override')->getFrontend()->getValue($_product);
if ($attributeOrderOverrideArray = Mage::helper('core')->jsonDecode($attributeOrderOverride, true)) {
    foreach($attributeOrderOverrideArray as $k => $v) {
        if (is_array($v) && count($v) > 1) {
            $attribute = Mage::getSingleton('eav/config')->getAttribute('catalog_product', $k);
            $orderReferenceArray[$attribute->getAttributeId()] = array();
            $options = $attribute->getSource()->getAllOptions(false);
            foreach($v as $k2 => $v2) {
                foreach($options as $option) {
                    if ($option['label'] === trim($v2)) {
                    $orderReferenceArray[$attribute->getAttributeId()][$option['value']] = $option['label'];
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

Then, in our case, we in our catalog helper, $this->helper('catalog'), we parse the JSON configuration from Magento with PHP to build our attribute structure. So before we build out the HTML, I check if there's an overriding "order reference" for these attribute options, and, if so, swap the options around. Otherwise, they'll use the position set in the Attribute in the admin area:

    $configData = Mage::helper('core')->jsonDecode($jsonConfig, true);

    if (count($orderReferenceArray) > 0) {
        foreach($configData['attributes'] as $k => $v) {
            if (count($v['options']) > 1 && isset($orderReferenceArray[$k])) {
                $tmpOptions = array();
                foreach ($v['options'] as $v2) {
                    $tmpOptions[$v2['id']] = $v2;
                }
                $configData['attributes'][$k]['options'] = $this->sortArrayByArray($tmpOptions, array_keys($orderReferenceArray[$k]));
            }
        }
    }

And the sortArrayByArray method is:

public function sortArrayByArray($array,$orderArray) {
    $ordered = array();
    foreach($orderArray as $key) {
        if(array_key_exists($key,$array)) {
            $ordered[$key] = $array[$key];
            unset($array[$key]);
        }
    }
    return $ordered + $array;
}

Answer 2

How about:

1. sort them using usort and define a custom function to take into consideration your variables (gender, color)

2. Create a new module where you can define the order based on the gender:

• base attribute value (in your case gender)
• attribute value (color: gray, blue, pink)
• sort order

and implement this logic in the part that pulls the list of possible attribute values.

Note: Souldn't your products be configurable based on gender and color, not just color?