Question

I’m working for a client who owns a Magento-based store. It’s chock full of products, but the names of said products are a bit messy. He did not stick to one naming convention but used different conventions throughout the years. So whenever he looks up something using the Name filter in the Admin -> Manage Products section, the results leave a lot to be desired.

So I was wondering if there’s a way to make the filtering algorithm a bit more lax, specifically in regards to word order. Because if you have a product with a name like ‘word1 word2 word3‘ and you search ‘word1 word3‘ that products doesn’t appear in the results.

Any hint would be appreciated. Cheers!

AUG 28 UPDATE: My search led me to the class *Mage_Adminhtml_Block_Widget_Grid*, and more precisely to its protected method *_addColumnFilterToCollection()*. In here you have the $cond variable, which if you print out it gives you something like this:

Array ([like] => Zend_Db_Expr Object([_expression:protected] => ‘%search term%’ ))

Here if I could intercept that search term and make it into ‘%search%term%‘ before it gets submitted to the *Zend_Db_Expr* object I’d probably solve my problem. So, any ideas?

Answer 1

OK, here’s a solution for this problem. Please note I have not tested this too much, just on my local test magento. So problems may arise.

Our work class is Mage_Adminhtml_Block_Widget_Grid, found in ‘app/code/core/Mage/Adminhtml/Block/Widget/Grid.php’. You should copy this file in ‘app/code/local/Mage/Adminhtml/Block/Widget/Grid.php’, as to not overwrite core classes.

Now, in that file go to the function named _addColumnFilterToCollection. In here, delete everything inside the ‘} else {‘ statement and replace with:

$cond = $column->getFilter()->getCondition();
if ($field == "name" && isset($cond)) {
$filterOrig = $cond['like'];
$filterReplaced = str_replace(" ", "%", $filterOrig);
$newZendDbExpr = new Zend_Db_Expr($filterReplaced);
$modifCond = array('like'=>$newZendDbExpr);
$this->getCollection()->addFieldToFilter($field , $modifCond);
} else if ($field && isset($cond)) {
$this->getCollection()->addFieldToFilter($field , $cond);
}

The ‘$cond’ variable is the key here. If you print it you get something like:

Array([like] => Zend_Db_Expr Object([_expression:protected] => '%filter term%'));

That code snippet basically intercepts the filter term that’s passed to the Zend_Db_Expr object, passes it through a str_replace() to replace any whitespace with a ‘%’ wildcard and then sends it back to the object.

So now if you have a product with a name like ‘word1 word2 word3’ and search filter by term ‘word1 word3’ you will get proper results. I am open to suggestions, this might not be the best approach. I’ll update after properly testing this. Cheers!

SEP 06 UPDATE: Well, after some live testing, results are good and exactly what I wanted when. It seems there is no negative performance impact either.

And the interesting fact is that this little modification applies to filtering in every place where you have a product grid in the admin interface (for example when creating a new order manually and you click Add Products, or in the Manage Categories -> whatever category -> Category Products tab)

SEP 06 UPDATE 2: There is an issue. If you’re in the Orders grids and try to filter by status it throws an error. I need to make this filter only apply to the Name field. Any ideas?

SEP 06 UPDATE 3: I revised the script to only apply to the Name field of Product grids. Now there are no conflicts with filter products by visibility or orders by status etc.