how to assign random product positions in Magento category?

Question

I have the following issue in Magento 1.9: there are categories with a lot of products in them and the default sort order is by position and all product position in Magento backend is 1. So what happens is that when you open a category on the frontend a lot of similar products show first followed by another set of similar type of products. I want to randomize their positions somehow (by a script or anything else) so that different kind of products show mixed together.

For example I have categories wine, champagne and whisky and products in them and I also have category birthday products that includes products from these categories. And when the category is opened on the frontend first a lot of whisky products are shown then a lot of wine ... etc I want them mixed. Thanks in advance for any help!

Answer 1

You can do as below :

First get the category :

$category = Mage::getModel('catalog/category')
->setStoreId(Mage_Core_Model_App::ADMIN_STORE_ID)
->load($categoryId);

Then its product positions :

$products = $category->getProductsPosition();

This will be an array organized like this :

product_id_1 => position_1
product_id_1 => position_2

So foreach one of those products just set a random position (here between 0 and 9999) :

foreach($products as $productId => $position ){
    $products[$productId] = '' . rand(0,9999);
}

And finally save :

$category->setPostedProducts($products);
$category->save();

Here is below a script that you could put in /shell magento directory :

<?php
require_once './abstract.php';

class RandomCategoryOrder extends Mage_Shell_Abstract {    
    private $_categoryId = 188;

    public function run(){
        $category = Mage::getModel('catalog/category')
        ->setStoreId(Mage_Core_Model_App::ADMIN_STORE_ID)
        ->load($this->_categoryId);

        $products = $category->getProductsPosition();

        foreach($products as $productId => $position ){
            $products[$productId] = '' . rand(0,9999);
        }

        $category->setPostedProducts($products);

        try{
            $category->save();
        }catch(Exception $e){
            echo $e->getMessage();
        }
    }    

}
$randowCategoryOrder = new RandomCategoryOrder();
$randowCategoryOrder->run();