sorting by a function to ignore empty field

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Ben Deavin 3 posts 23 karma points

Jun 20, 2011 @ 17:53
0

Sorting by a function to ignore empty field
Hi,

This may be quite an xslt noob question and I don't know if this is possible but I'd like to sort a list of conted by date created but then have an optional 'DatePosted' field that will override the date created.

So at the moment we use

<xsl:sort select="@createDate" order="descending" />

but I want something like
```
<xsl:sort select="displayDateFunc(page)" order="descending" />

function displayDateFunc(page){
    if(page.DatePosted != ""){
        return page.DatePosted
    } else {
        return page.CreationDate
    }
}
```
obviously that won't work (being psudo-javascript and not xslt) but is there a way I could do that sort of thing? and if so how?

Thanks for your help

Ben
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Kim Andersen 1447 posts 2196 karma points MVP

Jun 20, 2011 @ 19:48
1
Hi Ben

So you want to sort your items by DatePosted if this one is present otherwise use the @createDate, is that correct?

I found this WIKI entry that shows you how this can be achieved. The below piece of code is taken from that entry with some changes to your alias-names:
```
<xsl:for-each select="$currentPage/* [@isDoc and string(umbracoNaviHide) != '1' ]">
  <xsl:sort  select="./DatePosted [string(current()/DatePosted)!=''] | ./@createDate [string(current()/DatePosted)='']"order="descending"/>
  
</xsl:for-each>
```
I hope this can help you out.

/Kim A
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Ben Deavin 3 posts 23 karma points

Jun 22, 2011 @ 18:31

0

Thanks, that looks like what I'm trying to achieve but unfortunately it doesn't seem to work, it just ignores the DatePosted even if a value is present. Any ideas?

Thanks

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Tom Fulton 2030 posts 4998 karma points c-trib

Jun 22, 2011 @ 19:20

0

Are you sure "DatePosted" is the right property alias and correct casing? Usually Umbraco doesn't let you use a capital letter to start a property alias

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Ben Deavin 3 posts 23 karma points

Jun 22, 2011 @ 19:39

0

Well it is actually datePosted, but I changed taht in the code already. still doesn't word :-(

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Kim Andersen 1447 posts 2196 karma points MVP

Jun 22, 2011 @ 23:03
0
Did you change the alias name in all of the three places in the snippet above?

Could you maybe try to print out the nodes in your for-each loop to check if the datePosted property is properly set. You can do this by printing out the nodes in a textarea like this:
```
<textarea>
 <xsl:for-each select="$currentPage/* [@isDoc and string(umbracoNaviHide) != '1' ]">
   <xsl:copy-of select="." />
 </xsl:for-each>
</textarea>
```
/Kim A
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Chriztian Steinmeier 2798 posts 8788 karma points MVP 8x admin c-trib

Jun 23, 2011 @ 01:00
2
Hi Ben - this should work (I know, we all say that :-) :
```
<xsl:sort select="(@createDate[not(normalize-space(../datePosted))] | datePosted)[1]" data-type="text" order="descending" />
```
(Builds a set of either both dates or only the datePosted date - then selects the first in the set)

/Chriztian
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Kim Andersen 1447 posts 2196 karma points MVP

Jun 23, 2011 @ 19:07

0

Uhh, that was a new one Chriztian! Haven't seen something like that before, but I sure like that snippet :)

/Kim A

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