sort

generates an ordering for a set

Syntax

// Sort one or more values
index = sort[value]
index = sort[value: (value1, value2, ...)]

// Sort one or more values, and specify the direction for each
index = sort[value direction]
index = sort[value: (value1, value2, ...), direction: ("up", "down", ...)]

// Sort according to some grouping
index = sort[value per]
index = sort[value direction per]

Arguments

  • value - one or more variables to sort. More than one variable can be provided using a list e.g. sort[value: (value1, ..., valueN)], and they will be sorted in turn.
  • direction - _optional_ - one or more directions by which to sort value. If no direction is provided, all variables are sorted from smallest to largest. Possible values are:
    • “up” for sorting from smallest to largest.
    • “down” for sorting from largest to smallest.
  • per - _optional_ - Instead of sorting the whole set, per allows you to divide the set into groups and sort each one.

The output is a set of indices, each of which maps to an element of the sorted variable. For example, if the value is ("A", "C", "D", "B"), then index is (1, 3, 4, 2).

Description

Sort generates an index that describes the ordering of an input value. It’s important to remember that variables in Eve are sets, and therefore have no ordering. Because of this, sort does not reorder value, but it generates a set of indices, each of which maps to an element in value.

Sort is flexible, and can generate an ordering over multiple dimensions, directions, and groupings.

index = sort[value] generates an ordering of value from smallest to largest.

index = sort[value direction] generates an ordering of value in a given direction. Acceptable values are “up” and “down”.

index = sort[value: (value1, ... , valueN)] generates an ordering of a list of values, ordering by value1 first, then value2, and so on. For example, if you have #person records with name, age and height attributes, you could sort as follows:

search
  [#person name age height]
  index = sort[value: (age, name, height)]

This will sort the people first by age, then by name, then by height.

index = sort[value: (value1, ... , valueN), direction: (direction1, ... , directionN)] does the same as above, but you can specify the direction you sort each variable. Acceptable value for direction are “up” and “down”. By default, values are sorted in the “up” direction.

index = sort[value per] sorts value, grouped by per. This divides value into groups according to the elements of per, and each one is sorted.

Examples

We have #student records with grade (1 - 12), teacher, GPA (0.0 - 4.0) attributes. We can sort the students by grade:

search
  [#student name grade]
  index = sort[value: grade]

bind @browser
  [#div sort: index, text: "{{index}} - {{name}} {{grade}}"]

The browser handles the task of rendering the divs in the order specified by the sortattribute. Taking this further, we can choose the direction of the sortted set, whether “up” or “down”. The default direction is “up” when none is specified.

search
  [#student name grade]
  index = sort[value: grade, direction: "down"]
  
bind @browser
  [#div sort: index, text: "{{index}} - {{name}} {{grade}}"]

You can also sort across multiple axes of a record. For instance, we can sort grade from 9 to 12, then sort by name from Z - A.

search
  [#student name grade]
  index = sort[value: (grade, name) , direction: ("up","down")]

bind @browser
  [#div sort: index, text: "{{index}} - {{name}} {{grade}}"]

This can be extended to sort any number of attributes

search
  [#student name grade teacher GPA]
  index = sort[value: (grade, teacher, name, GPA) , direction: ("up", "down", "up", "down")]

bind @browser
  [#div sort: index, text: "{{index}} - {{name}} {{grade}} {{teacher}} {{GPA}}"]

Finally, we can group sorted attributes with the per argument. Here you can see the difference between sorting by name then grade, and sorting by name per grade.

search
  [#student name grade GPA]
  index = sort[value: (GPA, name), per: grade]
  
bind @browser
  [#div sort: index, text: "{{index}} - {{name}} {{grade}}"]

When you sort per grade, then name is first grouped by grade, and each of those groups is then sorted. This is why index goes from 1-6 instead of 1-20 as in the other examples; Although there are still 20 elements in index, the maximum is 6 because no grade has more than 6 students. You might want to sort data this way in order to display it in a nested structure, such as this:

search
    [#student name grade teacher]
  index = sort[value: name, per: grade]
  
bind @browser
  [#div grade children: 
    [#h3 sort: 0, text: "Grade: {{grade}}"]
    [#div sort: index, text: "{{index}} {{name}}"]]

Commit some test data

commit
  [#student name: "Mach", grade: 9, teacher: "Mr. Black", GPA: "1.0"]
  [#student name: "Pok", grade: 9, teacher: "Mrs. Brown", GPA: "3.4"]
  [#student name: "Karima", grade: 9, teacher: "Mr. Black", GPA: "2.4"]
  [#student name: "Garth", grade: 9, teacher: "Mrs. Brown", GPA: "2.8"]
  [#student name: "Berta", grade: 9, teacher: "Mr. Black", GPA: "2.7"]
  [#student name: "Maxine", grade: 10, teacher: "Mr. Red", GPA: "4.0"]
  [#student name: "Gwyn", grade: 10, teacher: "Mrs. Blue", GPA: "2.5"]
  [#student name: "Ilse", grade: 10, teacher: "Mr. Red", GPA: "3.0"]
  [#student name: "Hobert", grade: 11, teacher: "Ms. Green", GPA: "3.2"]
  [#student name: "Arlean", grade: 10, teacher: "Mr. Red", GPA: "2.4"]
  [#student name: "Ty", grade: 10, teacher: "Mrs. Blue", GPA: "1.7"]
  [#student name: "Kermit", grade: 11, teacher: "Ms. Green", GPA: "2.9"]
  [#student name: "Cortez", grade: 11, teacher: "Mrs. Orange", GPA: "2.3"]
  [#student name: "Polly", grade: 11, teacher: "Ms. Green", GPA: "2.1"]
  [#student name: "Damion", grade: 12, teacher: "Mrs. Purple", GPA: "3.8"]
  [#student name: "Gretchen", grade: 12, teacher: "Mrs. Yellow", GPA: "2.8"]
  [#student name: "Octavio", grade: 12, teacher: "Mrs. Purple", GPA: "3.4"]
  [#student name: "Pa", grade: 12, teacher: "Mrs. Yellow", GPA: "3.5"]
  [#student name: "Elwanda", grade: 10, teacher: "Mrs. Blue", GPA: "1.3"]
  [#student name: "Guadalupe", grade: 11, teacher: "Mrs. Orange", GPA: "3.7"]