Question

I using Magento 1.6.2.

Is there any way to set the position for Attribute Option Labels on a Site View Level and not on a global level?
Reason: Here the Values for Color in English and German

Black / Schwarz
Clear / Transparent
Copper / Kupfer
Yellow / Gelb

It is obvious that the sorting is different for different languages.
Overriding the position value and sorting the values in the frontpage code is not possible because there are options where alphanumeric sorting doesn’t make sense:

i.e. Small Medium Large

Please help

Answer 1

Yes, this is very possible. But it’s a fairly deep change, depending on what you would like to accomplish with this. This will get you started:

You want to first add a new column to eav/attribute_option_value table. Here is the setup script for that:

$installer = $this;

$installer->startSetup();

$installer->run("
    ALTER TABLE `{$this->getTable('eav/attribute_option_value')}` ADD COLUMN `sort_order` INT UNSIGNED NULL DEFAULT 0;
");

$installer->endSetup();

Next, you need to rewrite Mage_Eav_Model_Mysql4_Entity_Attribute_Option_Collection. When performing the join for the store filter, you need to add your sort_order there:

public function setStoreFilter($storeId=null, $useDefaultValue=true)
{
    if (is_null($storeId)) {
        $storeId = Mage::app()->getStore()->getId();
    }
    $sortBy = 'store_default_value';
    if ($useDefaultValue) {
        $this->getSelect()
            ->join(array('store_default_value'=>$this->_optionValueTable),
            'store_default_value.option_id=main_table.option_id',
            array('default_value'=>'value'))
            ->joinLeft(array('store_value'=>$this->_optionValueTable),
            'store_value.option_id=main_table.option_id AND '.$this->getConnection()->quoteInto('store_value.store_id=?', $storeId),
            array('store_value'=>'value',
                'value' => new Zend_Db_Expr('IF(store_value.value_id>0, store_value.value,store_default_value.value)',
                'sort_order'))) // ADDED
            ->where($this->getConnection()->quoteInto('store_default_value.store_id=?', 0));
    }
    else {
        $sortBy = 'store_value';
        $this->getSelect()
            ->joinLeft(array('store_value'=>$this->_optionValueTable),
            'store_value.option_id=main_table.option_id AND '.$this->getConnection()->quoteInto('store_value.store_id=?', $storeId),
            'value',
            'sort_order') // ADDED
            ->where($this->getConnection()->quoteInto('store_value.store_id=?', $storeId));
    }
    $this->setOrder("store_value.sort_order", 'ASC'); // CHANGED

    return $this;
}

To show what is going on: each attribute has a source model. The source model is responsible for providing the values in a frontend dropdown-type list (select, multiselect). If the source model is Mage_Eav_Model_Entity_Attribute_Source_Table, which it will be by default if the attribute type is select or multiselect, then this code retrieves the values:

$collection = Mage::getResourceModel('eav/entity_attribute_option_collection')
    ->setPositionOrder('asc')
    ->setAttributeFilter($this->getAttribute()->getId())
    ->setStoreFilter($this->getAttribute()->getStoreId())
    ->load();

As you can see, we are rewriting the setStoreFilter() function. This is the last one called. You might want to add an unshiftOrder('main_table.sort_order', 'ASC') at the beginning of the rewritten function, just for good measure that the `main_table.sort_order does not get in the way.

I’ll leave it to you to make the necessary adjustments to the admin panel to provide the option for setting the sort order matrix.