Catalog Sort Rules for OpenCart — your own product order for every category, brand and tag

Catalog Sort Rules for OpenCart is a module for stores where one product order for the whole catalogue is not enough. In standard OpenCart the “Default” order is the same for every page: the “Sort Order” field on the product form. But you want it to differ: newest first in “Smartphones”, cheapest first in “Accessories”, bestsellers on a brand page, and a hand-made order with “top” products at the start in a category with a seasonal offer.

The module sets the default order separately for each category, brand page and tag page. The rule applies until the shopper picks a sorting himself: as soon as he picks “Price” or “Name”, the list is sorted exactly as he asked. The module does not touch the OpenCart core, templates or OCMOD patches.

It works together with our Smart Filter and Smart Search for OpenCart — tested on one store with all three modules.

Running WooCommerce? There is a separate Catalog Sort Rules for WooCommerce plugin with the same approach: its own sorting for every category, brand and tag, pinned products and a manual order.

What the shopper sees

The shopper opens a category and sees the products in the order you set for it: pinned first, then by the rule, out-of-stock products at the end. Nothing new appears on the page: no scripts, no extra requests, and “Sort By” still shows “Default”. As soon as the shopper picks another sorting, he gets exactly that — the module does not force its order on someone who has already decided how to browse.

What the admin gets

The menu item Catalog → “Sort rules” with the list of rules, and a “Settings” page.

• New rule: page type (category, all categories, brand, all brands, tag), the page itself and the order. One rule per place: the module will not create a second rule for the same category, it opens the existing one.
• Rule list: what is set, on or off, with “Edit”, “Open on the store”, “Turn off” and “Delete” buttons. Pro rules without a licence are marked “Pro — paused”.

Rule page

• Order — store default, newest, price ↑ and ↓, name A–Z and Z–A, rating, stock, model; Pro also has bestsellers and a hand-made order.
• “In stock first” and “On sale first” (Pro) — added on top of any order.
• “Also for subcategories” — subcategories without a rule of their own use this one.
• Pinned products (Pro): search by name, model, SKU or ID, up to 50 per rule, your own order with arrows. A pinned product is shown only on pages it already belongs to.

Pro: hand-made order

For the “Hand-made order” the module lists all products of the page (up to 2000): drag them with the mouse or use the arrows to put them in the order you need, then save. Products added to the category later go after this list in the store default order.

Settings

• Turn the module on or off: when it is off, every page keeps the store default order, and the rules are kept.
• “Pinned on top when the shopper sorts” (Pro) — off by default.
• Bestsellers: how many days of sales to count (90 by default), and a “Recalculate now” button.

How it works, step by step

1. The shopper opens a category, brand or tag page. The module finds the rule that applies to it: its own, a parent category rule with “Also for subcategories”, or “All categories” / “All brands”.
2. If the shopper has already picked a sorting, the module does nothing (except pinned products with the Pro option).
3. An order that is a standard OpenCart sorting (price, name, newest…) is handed to OpenCart itself — so specials, customer group discounts and taxes are calculated by the core as always.
4. Pinned products, “in stock”, “on sale”, bestsellers and the hand-made order are added in front of the standard sorting in the product list query — only for the list of the page itself, not for the “Featured” or “Latest” blocks.
5. Bestsellers are counted from orders with a processing or complete status over N days and refresh on their own every 12 hours when a bestsellers rule exists.

Under the hood

• No core edits. No OCMOD patches; two events around getProducts() of the OpenCart product model. One class library is identical in all three builds, and the code is PHP 7.0 compatible.
• Standard sorting stays standard. If the rule matches a standard sorting, the module only passes it as the default choice. Its own keys (pinned, hand-made order, bestsellers) are added to the start of the outer ORDER BY for one query only.
• The OpenCart 4 cache is switched off for that one query, so the rule order does not get into the product list cache and does not “stick” after the rule is deleted.
• If a theme or a module has set its own order in the list query, the module leaves it alone.
• Own tables oc_cc_catsort_rule, oc_cc_catsort_item (pinned products and the hand-made order), oc_cc_catsort_stat (sales for bestsellers). Core tables are not changed.
• The licence lives in a separate settings group: “Save” does not touch it.

How to install

1. OpenCart 4: Extensions → Installer → upload cc_catsort.ocmod.zip (do not rename the archive) and press “Install”. OpenCart 3: Extensions → Installer → cc_catsort-oc3.ocmod.zip. OpenCart 2.3: upload the contents of the upload/ folder from cc_catsort-oc2.ocmod.zip to the store root (FTP or the hosting file manager) — the 2.3 Installer does not copy files without a configured FTP.
2. Extensions → Extensions → Modules → CatCode Catalog Sort Rules → “Install”.
3. Catalog → “Sort rules”: choose the page and the order, press “Create rule”.
4. Press “Open on the store” next to the rule and check the order.
5. For Pro: paste the licence key from the e-mail you get after payment, or press “Try Pro for 7 days” on the “Licence” tab.