Sorting a list

[Mike Wilson]

I have a list that I present to the user in a dialog box. I would like to have two buttons to sort the list by either by the first column value or by date. The list has to be in the column arrangement shown. Sorting the list by the first column is straight forward. To sort by date, I can write a bunch of code to parse the date and place it in column one, sort, and re-parse and re-construct the list into proper column configuration, but I thought maybe someone had a better, slicker method.

2029          09/25/2016       ALBERTVILLE
2030          07/10/2016       PARK RAPIDS
2031          09/25/2016       BIG LAKE
2032          09/11/2016       SARTELL
2033          09/25/2016       RAMSEY
2035          08/21/2016       ST. CLOUD
2036          09/11/2016       BUFFALO
2038          08/02/2016       NEW PRAGUE
2039          08/21/2016       ST. JOSEPH
2042          08/02/2016       BELLE PLAINE
2043          07/17/2016       MELROSE
2044          10/02/2016       MONTEVIDEO
2046          08/10/2016       ISANTI

[Tim Kiebert]

Re: Sorting a list

How are you creating this list? Is each line just padded with spaces? What type of control are using?

[Mike Wilson]

Re: Sorting a list

It turned out to be much, much less coding than I originally thought it would take.
To answer your question Tim, list created with table.external_record_content_get() - about my most used function in A5, love this function! The first column can have 3-11 characters and I pad it with spaces to make the first character of date be position 14. You will see it in the code. I thought of pulling the date to the front of the line and sorting and converting it back to proper column order was going to require a lot of code, which my first attempts to do this were leading me to, but I was wrong.

dim vLwith_dates as C
vLwith_dates=<<%l%
2029          09/25/2016       ALBERTVILLE
2030          07/10/2016       PARK RAPIDS
2031          09/25/2016       BIG LAKE
2032          09/11/2016       SARTELL
2033          09/25/2016       RAMSEY
2035          08/21/2016       ST. CLOUD
2036          09/11/2016       BUFFALO
2038          08/02/2016       NEW PRAGUE
2039          08/21/2016       ST. JOSEPH
2042          08/02/2016       BELLE PLAINE
2043          07/17/2016       MELROSE
2044          10/02/2016       MONTEVIDEO
2046          08/10/2016       ISANTI
%l%

dim vk as C
ui_modeless_dlg_box("Install Dates",<<%dlg%
{font=arial,10,b}{background=hsi title}{position=2,4}
{justify=center}<Sort by Store ID>    <Sort by Date>;
The list is copied to the clipboard
{lf};
[.70,16vK^#vLwith_dates!evsk_*];
{justify=center}<15Close>
%dlg%,<<%code%
if a_dlg_button="close"
	ui_modeless_dlg_close("install Dates")
end if

if a_dlg_button="Sort by Store ID"
	vLwith_dates=sortsubstr(vLwith_dates,crlf())
end if

if a_dlg_button="Sort by Date"
	dim vL2 as C=""
	for each foo in vLwith_dates
		vL2=vL2+substr(foo,14,10)+"..."+foo+crlf()
	next
	vL2=sortsubstr(vL2,crlf())
	vLwith_dates=""
	for each foo in vL2
		vLwith_dates=vLwith_dates+word(foo,2,"...")+crlf()
	next
end if
%code%)

[Tim Kiebert]

Re: Sorting a list

Hi Mike,

I had already started to look at this before I saw your latest post so will offer it up even though you have it working.

Using an array you can reduce the code quite a bit.

dim vLwith_dates as C
vLwith_dates=<<%l%
2029          09/25/2016       ALBERTVILLE
2030          07/10/2016       PARK RAPIDS
2031          09/25/2016       BIG LAKE
2032          09/11/2016       SARTELL
2033          09/25/2016       RAMSEY
2035          08/21/2016       ST. CLOUD
2036          09/11/2016       BUFFALO
2038          08/02/2016       NEW PRAGUE
2039          08/21/2016       ST. JOSEPH
2042          08/02/2016       BELLE PLAINE
2043          07/17/2016       MELROSE
2044          10/02/2016       MONTEVIDEO
2046          08/10/2016       ISANTI
%l%
[COLOR="#FF0000"]dim with_dates_arr[0] as C
with_dates_arr.initialize(vLwith_dates)
[/COLOR]
dim vk as C
ui_modeless_dlg_box("Install Dates",<<%dlg%
{font=arial,10,b}{background=hsi title}{position=2,4}
{justify=center}<Sort by Store ID>    <Sort by Date>;
The list is copied to the clipboard
{lf};
[.70,16vK^#[COLOR="#FF0000"]with_dates_arr[/COLOR]!evsk_*];
{justify=center}<15Close>
%dlg%,<<%code%
if a_dlg_button="close"
	ui_modeless_dlg_close("install Dates")
end if

if a_dlg_button="Sort by Store ID"
	[COLOR="#FF0000"]with_dates_arr.sort("A","substr(value,1,4)")[/COLOR]
elseif a_dlg_button="Sort by Date"
	[COLOR="#FF0000"]with_dates_arr.sort("A","substr(value,14,10)")[/COLOR]
end if
%code%)

[MoGrace]

Re: Sorting a list

Did you check out the Listview Control?

[Steve Andrews]

Re: Sorting a list

It would appear that these scripts would work fine if all dates involved were in the same year (as they are in the sample data). But to cover for other multi-year date ranges, you may have to replace "substr(value,14,10)" with "dtos(ctod(substr(value,14,10)))".

Steve

[Mike Wilson]

Re: Sorting a list

Thank you Tim, Thank you Steve! Robin, I stay away from Listview Control at all costs... way too complicated code for this lad.