Sorting on Custom Attribute

Question

I have an attribute I created called "sales_rank" that I have set to use as a sortable attribute. However, when I choose it from the product list, it is not sorting how I expect. On further inspection, it appears that it's sorting as a text field and not as a number . This means that it will go 101, 1014, 102, 1035, 104, 11, 1204, etc....

How do I fix this? When creating the attribute, there's no way to tell it it's a number. You can select "Integer" from the "Input Validation" box, so is that the answer? I haven't tried it yet...

Any thoughts?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Try that and come back if it continues not to work. Data fields can be saved in several tables, and it sounds like you are saving this field as a string (as evidenced by the alphabetical sort).

If you really want to know where it is saved, run this query against your database:

select backend_type from eav_attribute where attribute_code = 'sales_rank';

You want that to say number/integer, etc.

Answer 2

I found my solution here: http://www.magentocommerce.com/bug-tracking/issue?issue=7204

Basically, use the 'price' attribute type because the system sees it as an integer. Not pretty, but it works a treat!