Adding random product listing for categories

Question

How i can add a new option in the drop down product listing in category layout? I saw a lot of threads which customize template\catalog\product\list.phtml But i think adding a new dropdown option is better and the dropdown will still be valuable...

Answer 1

The following simple but unperformant solution should work

In your layout, add the custom order like this:

<reference name="product_list_toolbar">
    <action method="addOrderToAvailableOrders" translate="label">
        <code>RAND()</code>
        <label>Random</label>
    </action>
</reference>

(in catalog_category_default, catalog_category_layered or in the custom layout update configuration for a single category)

The problem with this is, that the resulting ORDER BY RAND() query is very slow, especially for big categories. A performant solution would need custom preparation of the collection and is not integrated so easily.

You can read more about random product collection performance on my blog: http://www.schmengler-se.de/en/2015/09/show-random-products-in-magento-you-are-doing-it-wrong/

A different approach

You could add a column "random_sort" to the product index tables and use a cronjob to update it with new random numbers regularly (e.g. every few minutes or every hour). Then you can use the XML snippet from above and replace RAND() with random_sort. As a positive side effect, even pagination in the random order will work, without getting duplicates. At least until the random numbers are regenerated.

Answer 2

@Alexandros some help to ans

you can get the used category from:

$category = Mage::registry('category') or Mage::registry('current_category')

To do so, you want to implement an observer listening on catalog_block_product_list_collection and instead of joining and filtering for stock options, you add a category filter: addCategoryFilter based on the registry entry.