Ordering column "name" in the List view

rubyonrails-talk
1

Hello, I am very new to RoR and am learning at a fairly good pace, but a seemingly simple task is leaving me stuck. I have a DB table called 'workers' and fields for 'first_name' and 'last_name' need to be combined in the 'list' view and shown in order of last name. The code I have below will render the name as "Last, First". How can I order the table by the name column when it is a combination of 2 fields?

--thanks

<table class="list" width="90%">   <tr>     <th>Name</th>     <th>Email</th>     <th>Phone Number #1</th>     <th>Phone Number #2</th>      <th>Options</th>   </tr> <% for worker in @workers %> <% row_color = cycle("F8F8F8", "ffffff")%>   <tr style="background: #<%= row_color %>;">     <td><%= link_to %Q{ #{worker.last_name}, #{worker.first_name}}, :action => 'show', :id => worker %></td>     <td><%= mail_to worker.email, worker.email, :subject => "This is an example email", :body => "This is the body of the message." %></

    <td><%= worker.telephone_1 %></td>     <td><%= worker.telephone_2 %></td>     <td><span class="smaller"><%= link_to 'Edit', :action => 'edit', :id => worker %>     <%= link_to 'Delete', { :action => 'destroy', :id => worker }, :confirm => 'Are you sure?', :post => true %></span></td> </tr> <% end %> </table>

2

Hi,

I'm pretty new to RoR, too. But for what it's worth, I think you need to look at your controller which populates your @workers collection and add an :order expression, something like:

find(:all, order="name")

If nothing else, look up "order" in a Rails book.

HTH, Richard

3

Hi Wayne,

@workers = Worker.find(:all, :order => 'last_name, first_name')

Nice job. But do you know where there's an example of this where the app toggles between ASC and DESC when the column-name is clicked?

I got some suggestions about this a few months ago but never got it working right. I'd like to find an "applet" on the Web or in a book that demonstrates this.

Regards, Richard

4

Try this. sorttable: Make all your tables sortable

5

Hi,

Thanks for that GREAT article. Of course, it's all JavaScript rather than Ruby/Rails. But it works nicely and is designed beautifully, so it'll be a great education for me to translate it to RoR with minimal JavaScript.

Best wishes, Richard

6

I ended up using that too. It's a great tool!

7

I forgot to thank you for this. It was helpful!