Sort Product Categories by 'Menu Order" in the Product Categories Widget in Elementor Pro

[mtorrance]

Prerequisites

• I have searched for similar feature requests in both open and closed discussions and cannot find an existing request.
• I have verified that the feature is still missing from the latest stable versions of Elementor or Elementor Pro.

What problem is your feature request going to solve? Please describe..

In the 'order by’ menu of the Product Category widget in Elementor Pro there isn’t the ability to sort the categories by ‘menu_order’ which is the order that the user creates in the Product Categories editor in WooCommerce when dragging them around. Some of my sites have hundreds of categories and a lot of time is spent organizing them for it to be ignored by the Product Categories widget.

Currently users have to add something like this to functions.php
—>
function inject_menu_order_controls( $element, $args ) {
$elementor = \ElementorPro\Plugin::elementor();
$control_data = $elementor->controls_manager->get_control_from_stack( 'wc-categories', 'orderby' );
$control_data['options']['menu_order'] = esc_html__( 'Menu Order', 'elementor-pro' );
$element->update_control('orderby', [ 'options' => $control_data['options'] ]);
}

add_action( 'elementor/element/wc-categories/section_filter/before_section_end', 'inject_menu_order_controls', 30, 2 );
<—

but if you just add this one line of code to line 157 of categories.php (plugins/elementor-pro/modules/woocommerce/widgets/categories.php) just after 'count’ then it would be available without have to modify functions.php.

'menu_order' =>esc_html__( 'Menu Order', 'elementor-pro' ),

This has been tested and works in the current public release.

Describe the solution you'd like.

Being able to select "Menu Order" from the "Order by" menu in the Elementor Pro Product Categories widget which currently only has Name, Slug, Description and count without the need to edit the functions.php file.

Describe alternatives you've considered.

Currently users have to add something like this to functions.php
—>
function inject_menu_order_controls( $element, $args ) {
$elementor = \ElementorPro\Plugin::elementor();
$control_data = $elementor->controls_manager->get_control_from_stack( 'wc-categories', 'orderby' );
$control_data['options']['menu_order'] = esc_html__( 'Menu Order', 'elementor-pro' );
$element->update_control('orderby', [ 'options' => $control_data['options'] ]);
}

add_action( 'elementor/element/wc-categories/section_filter/before_section_end', 'inject_menu_order_controls', 30, 2 );
<—

Additional context

No response

Agreement

• I agree that my request may be closed without action if it doesn't meet all the requirements.