Custom Sort - Possible?

Hi all,

I'm working on a help system that lets users assign a "tag color" to their requests in addition to assigning the usual "high, medium, low" priority. My question is whether it's possible to do a sort based on the tag color. Valid colors are green, yellow, orange, and red, and these are stored as strings in the database.

I'd like to use something like:

# Customer Model has_many :requests, :order => priority, tag_color

Is it possible to add a sort based on these string values?

Thanks!

I'm working on a help system that lets users assign a "tag color" to their requests in addition to assigning the usual "high, medium, low" priority. My question is whether it's possible to do a sort based on the tag color. Valid colors are green, yellow, orange, and red, and these are stored as strings in the database.

I'd like to use something like:

# Customer Model has_many :requests, :order => priority, tag_color

That will sort them alphabetically, probably not what you want.

If there is an order those colors you could do something like this:

:order => "priority, tag_color = 'red', tag_color = 'orange', tag_color = 'yellow', tag_color = 'green'"

With an optional "DESC" thrown in to each of those. Basically that converts your order by clause into a series of booleans and sorts that way. Little ugly, but it will work.

-philip

You could also put a method like this in your Request model

def Request.sql_tag_color_order   '(CASE requests.tag_color WHEN 'red' THEN 1 WHEN 'yellow' THEN 2 WHEN 'green' THEN 3 ELSE 4 END)' end

Then change the line in your Customer model to has_many :requests, :order => "priority, #{Request.sql_tag_color_order}"

That way when you want to order requests in another part of your application you can use Request.sql_tag_color_order instead of having to repeat the transformation from text to something order.

HTH

Neal L wrote: