fixed_order parameter alteration?

Question

I'm working on a site where I utilise a custom field to store a pipe-delimited list of related entries, in order to sort Playa's reverse related entries. This looks something like this:

{exp:channel:entries
    channel='deals'
    limit='1'
}
<h1>{title}</h1>
<ul>
    {exp:playa:parents
        channel='products'
        var_prefix='parent'
        fixed_order='{deal_text_product_order}'
    }
        <li>{parent:title}</li>
    {/exp:playa:parents}
</ul>
{/exp:channel:entries}

Now this works fine, my client can order their products (I'm doing this in Safecracker, with jQuery UI Sortable) "and all was well with the world". However, if they add a product after the order's been set, the product isn't shown because it's not in the list in the fixed_order parameter. Ideally I'd want any products not in the pipe-delimited list to be shown after the products that were in the list... Is there any way to achieve that?

So for example my client sorts the products as 3|1|4|2, and then publishes new products with ID 5 and 6, I'd like them to be appended after products 3, 1, 4 and 2, displaying the products in the order 3 1 4 2 5 6. Does that make sense?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Low Reorder has this exact functionality you describe. New entries are added to either the beginning or end of a manually ordered list. But this only works thru the control panel.

http://gotolow.com/addons/low-reorder

You could possibly write a custom SQL query to update the Low Reorder tables with the External Entries add-on. Low Reorder uses a table called "exp_low_reorder_orders" thats just a list of entry ids. External Entries can be called from any EE template:

Put the plugin in its own EE template, call the template with jQuery’s .load() and .live() functions for AJAXy goodness, and your web site is now a web app!

http://engaging.net/products/external-entries

Answer 2

You could do this super inefficiently without reorder.

Basically call {exp:playa:parents} twice, fixed_order="" once for your ordered set, then entry_id="" once for the rest WITHOUT the ordered set. Something like:

...
{exp:playa:parents
    channel='products'
    var_prefix='parent'
    fixed_order='{deal_text_product_order}'
}
    <li>{parent:title}</li>
{/exp:playa:parents}

{exp:playa:parents
    channel='products'
    var_prefix='parent'
    entry_id='not {deal_text_product_order}'
}
    <li>{parent:title}</li>
{/exp:playa:parents}
...