dotJ Software

Sorting is one critical item when it comes to using grids to display your data. By default, our library can sort the rows of a grid using a generic algorithm. This suffices for most basic needs. However, sometimes you may wish to perform the row sorting on your own and just have the grid render accordingly.

This is now possible in version 2.0 by way of the IGridCommandEventArgs and IGridListener interfaces. In this example, we let the database do the row sorting using the standard ORDER BY SQL clause. The sort parameters are posted to the server and can be extracted out via the IGridCommandEventArgs interface. The sort parameters can then be translated into SQL. The last part is to inform the grid that the rows are already sorted. This can be done using the doCustomSort callback method.

public boolean doCustomSort(ISortContext sortContext) {
	// Tell the grid we are sorting upon the first display of the grid.
	if (isPost == false) {
           sortContext.setSortColumnNumber(sortColumn);
           sortContext.setSortType(sortType);
	}

	return true;
}

By returning true, you are telling the grid not to sort the rows. In the above example, the two setter calls are necessary since we are showing the grid as sorted when it first displays (isPost == false).

Messages

Id	Last Name	First Name	Gender	Zip
10	Danns	Allan	Male	04105
2	adas	asdasdad	Female	34561
6	Obama	barack	Female	04101
18	Obama	Barrack Jr.	Female	32419
13	Fellows	Bill	Male	04105
12	Test	Data	Male	78723
3	das	dsad	Female	22151
9	Leno	Jay	Male	04105
7	Hogan	jeff	Male	04105
19	Gatezngan	Jeff	Male	10234
15	Chan	Liam	Male	47387
14	Lu	Lucy	Female	42844
4	Gbv	matt	Male	90210
16	McCartney	Paul	Male	78378
11	ppp	Paula	Female	04106
8	gcg	prova	Male	66778
1	test	Ryan	Male	112312313
20	Ruthi	Vijay	Male	4354
5	Jackson	xxx11111	Female	1234

The above grid contains 19 records.

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CustomSortAction.java

MyGridListenerCustomSort.java

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