Recipe 21.4 Sorting Recordsets by a Single Column

21.4.1 Problem

You want to sort the records in a recordset, ordering them by the values in a single column.

21.4.2 Solution

Use the RecordSet.sortItemsBy( ) method.

21.4.3 Discussion

If you want to do a simple sort (sorting according to one column) on a recordset, use the sortItemsBy( ) method. This method takes the name of the column on which to sort as a parameter, and it sorts the records within the original recordset (no copy is made). Passing the value "DESC" to the method as a second parameter sorts the records in descending order. Otherwise, the sort order is ascending.

#include "NetServices.as" rs = new RecordSet(["ID", "NAME"]); rs.addItem({ID: 24, NAME: "a"}); rs.addItem({ID: 42, NAME: "b"}); rs.addItem({ID: 66, NAME: "c"}); rs.addItem({ID: 93, NAME: "d"}); rs.addItem({ID: 33, NAME: "e"}); // Sort the recordset by ID values in ascending order. rs.sortItemsBy("ID"); /* Outputs:    record 0      ID: 24      NAME: a     record 1      ID: 33      NAME: e    record 2      ID: 42      NAME: b    record 3      ID: 66      NAME: c    record 4      ID: 93      NAME: d */ rs.trace(  ); // Sort the recordset by the NAME column in descending order. rs.sortItemsBy("NAME", "DESC"); /* Outputs:    record 0      ID: 33      NAME: e    record 1      ID: 93      NAME: d    record 2      ID: 66      NAME: c    record 3      ID: 42      NAME: b    record 4      ID: 24      NAME: a */ rs.trace(  );