Feature Proposal: Search ordering on multiple fields

Motivation

Consider the situation where you order a table on, say, City. You might want to sub-order people that are in the same city by their name.

Description and Documentation

Add syntax for order parameter to SEARCH: formfield(field1,field2,..), with the intended semantics of ordering on field1 first, then on field2, etc..

Examples

%SEARCH{"foo" scope="topic" order="formfield(City),formfield(Name),date,author"}%

Impact

WhatDoesItAffect:

Implementation

Discussion

This was raised by SvenDowideit as Tasks.Item96. One possible issue: what about the reverse parameter to sort, which reverses the sort order? Does that need extending, what is the intended meaning when 'reverse="on"' when there are multiple fields?

-- KoenMartens - 08 Nov 2008 - 00:31

This could ride piggyback on GeneralSortingMechanism.

The 2 proposed libs are a little more complex. Not all fields are alphabetical, so they have the option to assign a sort key and type for each field. Something like this: field1=alpha, field2=int.

It would be good to start thinking here on the user interface of that code, and use the actual sorting lib hidden in Search,pm.

-- ArthurClemens - 08 Nov 2008 - 01:22

changed the propsed spec to be comma separated fields - so that its not presuming that is a couple of formfields. Also, that might allow formfield(Something)=reverseint,formfield(other)=date as Arthur suggests.

the reverse='on' setting would invert the final order that was calulated by the sort

Its all interconnected to the work I mooted in the Format and Search refactoring - and Arthur has jumpstarted.

-- SvenDowideit - 12 Nov 2008 - 11:33