Sorting Select Items

bones0 2008-03-31 14:23:07 UTC #1

Hi all

I got the impression that most (if not all) select fields aren’t sorted
or only sorted by the English texts (which makes it look unsorted in
every other language). Is that already an issue somebody is working at?
I may be able to address the issue for eTemplate-applications if my chef
decides it’s important for our crm-modules (that’s not unlikely). But I
doubt I will find time to add it into other template systems too.

Regards
Peter

Peter Guhl
Win-Lux GmbH
Obere Schöntalstrasse 22
CH - 8406 Winterthur

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Nathan_Gray-2 2008-03-31 15:01:08 UTC #2

Hi all

I got the impression that most (if not all) select fields aren’t
sorted
or only sorted by the English texts

It depends on what they’re for.
Some select fields are sorted in a start to finish way, such as New,
Open, Pending, Stalled, Done, where each option represents a step or a
status in a progression, as in projectmanager. Some are
chronological, such as Days, Week, Last Week, Last 2 Weeks, Month,
etc. in timesheet. Some (most, I think) display in the order they were
entered, preserving the original order. Some are sorted by priority
or preference, so that the most common options are at the top, and
less common options to the bottom, reducing the need to scroll. I
can’t think of any off the top of my head that are alphabetical, but I
suspect there are some.

Nathan Gray
nathan at goarctic dot com

Extra punctuation??? Ug!!!
Just say no! Punctuation marks do not gain significance if you
increase their number, they make you look silly. One is sufficient.

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bones0 2008-03-31 15:13:30 UTC #3

Nathan Gray schrieb:

Hi all

I got the impression that most (if not all) select fields aren’t
sorted
or only sorted by the English texts

It depends on what they’re for

Uhm… true. It depends a lot :-/ So I can hardly pick a reasonable
default. Is there a way to tell in eTemplate how I want them sorted? A
field labeled that way doesn’t exist… but that doesn’t mean much in
this application.

Regards
Peter

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Nathan_Gray-2 2008-03-31 15:33:18 UTC #4

I got the impression that most (if not all) select fields aren’t
sorted
or only sorted by the English texts

It depends on what they’re for

Uhm… true. It depends a lot :-/ So I can hardly pick a reasonable
default. Is there a way to tell in eTemplate how I want them sorted?

There is no special way to tell eTemplate how you want them sorted.
You get the options in the order you want before passing them into
eTemplate, and it will use that order. In the case of options from a
table, you can sort them in your query when you get them. When
there’s a set list of options in the code (eg New, Open, Pending…),
the order they are in the array when it is defined is the order they
will be in the selectbox.
For your own application, to get your options in alphabetical order,
with language taken into account, it should be possible to define the
array of options, with the label translated with lang:
$my_options = array(
‘opt_1’ => lang(‘Option 1’),
‘opt_2’ => lang(‘Second option’),
…
);
Then sort them with natsort() (or something), then pass the array to
eTemplate as usual.

Nathan Gray
nathan at goarctic dot com

Extra punctuation??? Ug!!!
Just say no! Punctuation marks do not gain significance if you
increase their number, they make you look silly. One is sufficient.

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