Forum OpenACS Q&A: Problem ordering ad_table

Hi,

My code does not seem to be re-ordering data in a table when the table header with the sort link is selected.  I'm not sure if my table definition is correctly defined for ordering.  Any help will be much appreciated.

My sql query in my xql file looks like this...

<fullquery name="msg_sql">
  <querytext>
    select id, summary, datefrom messages
    [ad_dimensional_sql $dimensional_list limit limit]
    [ad_order_by_from_sort_spec :orderby :table_def]
  </querytext>
</fullquery>

My table_def looks like this...

set table_def {
    { id "Report" {id $order} {} }
    { summary "Summary" {summary $order} {<td> \
    <a href="summary?[export_vars -url {id}]">$summary</a></td>} c }
    { date "Date" {date $order} {} c }
}

set messages [ad_table -Torderby $orderby msg_sql {} $table_def]

And in the ad_page_contract I have declared the orderby variable as follows...

{ orderby {date} }

I think it is ordering the table based on the date column by default.

Hi Andrew,

The sql query in the error log is as follows...

select id, summary, date from messages
where 1=1
limit 10

There seems to be no "order by" clause added to the query.

Claudio is right, in your case you don't need a where clause but you do have to pass the variables into the function.  The way it's written now the literal strings ":orderby" and ":tabledef" are being passed in and of course the ad_order_by_from_sort_spec emits an empty string since it
does not have a properly structured tabledef list to work with.