Sorting and Ordering Data

There are a few different functions that can be used to sort and order data in Athennian. These are: orderBy_A,orderBy_B, and sort.

When to Use

orderBy_A, orderBy_B

The orderBy_A and orderBy_B functions enable you to sort variables alphabetically or numerically in a list, either in ascending or descending order. The default within Athennian is to generate the list of variables in the order the data is added to the system, if no sorting function is applied.

Ascending or Descending Order

When used without additional syntax, the orderBy_A or orderBy_B functions default to ascending order (e.g. “A, B, C“; “0, 1 ,2 ,3“):

orderBy_A:'mixedStringVariable'

orderBy_B:'fieldVariable'

To sort in descending order (e.g. “C, B, A“; “3, 2, 1, 0“), you can append ! to the variable:

orderBy_A:'!mixedStringVariable'

orderBy_B:'!fieldVariable'

Advanced Sort: Secondary Parameter

Both orderBy_A and orderBy_B are advanced sort methods and can take a second parameter to sub-sort by as a fallback. This means that once the first parameter has been sorted, the secondary parameter will also be evaluated and sorted accordingly. This functionality is particularly useful for registers.

Sample code:

{#directors | orderBy_B:'lastName':'firstName'}

In the above example, the directors collection would:

• first be sorted alphabetically in ascending order by last name,

• then sorted alphabetically in ascending order by first name.

Examples

Sort

Use Case

The sort function remains the preferred option when we need to sort data by date. The syntax of the function would be:

sort:'dateVariable'

Ascending or Descending Order

When used without additional syntax, the sort function defaults to ascending order (from earliest to latest). To sort in descending (or inverse) order with sort, the boolean true is appended after a colon (:)

sort:'dateVariable':true

This is especially useful when data needs to be sorted in reverse chronological order with the most current information appearing first.

Example