Manipulating Suggests and Searches without Elasticsearch

Shopware 6 (English) Programming (EN)
1

Hello everyone!

I’m trying to control the order of products in Shopware 6’s search and suggest functionality based on a custom database field. The goal is for products with a higher value in this field to appear at the top.

Here’s what I’ve tried so far, without success. According to my logs, my subscriber is definitely being triggered, but I must be missing something — if it’s even possible at all.

FieldSorting / Criteria Events (ProductSearchCriteriaEvent, ProductSuggestCriteriaEvent)

  • Idea: Use FieldSorting on the custom field.

  • Problem: The custom field is not officially registered in Shopware.

  • Result: Criteria events ignore the field; the sorting doesn’t work.

Direct query access via Criteria (getQuery())

  • Attempt: Manually add ORDER BY msx_custom_ranking via getQuery().

  • Problem: getQuery() does not exist on ProductSearchCriteriaEvent or ProductSuggestCriteriaEvent.

Events ProductSearchResultEvent / ProductSuggestResultEvent

  • Idea: Sort the products after loading using a repository (getSortedIdsForProducts()) and then replace the elements via $products->setElements().

  • Problem: Even with the subscriber correctly triggered, the products were not sorted properly. Debug logs show the events fire, but the list remains unchanged.

Repository

  • Idea: Use a combination of a repository and a modified subscriber.

  • Problem: I haven’t found a working approach yet; apart from that, it’s tricky to write a proper search completely bypassing the DAL.

Unfortunately, none of this works. Does anyone have ideas or tips?

Thanks in advance!