[development] tablesort_sql . . .

24 Dec 2007

      I've been wrestling with this function off and on for several days now and 
finally decided to ask for some help from this list. greggles helped a bit on 
IRC, but I still wasn't able to do all I wanted. What I want to do is to be 
able to display a table that has the initial sort on a column other than the 
first. I have tried various things with this function, and either I'm just 
not getting it, or the function (nor related functions) doesn't support that 
functionality.

What I have is this, which works, but is not what I want:
<?php
      // Display the message information in a sortable table.
      $header = array(
        array('data' => t('Date/Time'), 'field' => 'message_date',
          'sort' => 'DESC'),
        array('data' => t('Subject'),   'field' => 'message_subject'),
        array('data' => t('From'),      'field' => 'from_address')
      );

      $query     = 'SELECT message_date, message_subject, from_address FROM 
{basic_webmail_messages} WHERE user_id = %d';
      $tablesort = tablesort_sql($header);
      $rows      = array();
      $result    = pager_query($query . $tablesort, 
variable_get('basic_webmail_messages_per_page', '25'), 0, NULL, $user->uid);
      while ($row = db_fetch_array($result)) {
...
?>

What I want is this (or what ever the correct way of doing it is), which 
doesn't work:
<?php
      // Display the message information in a sortable table.
      $header = array(
        array('data' => t('Subject'),   'field' => 'message_subject'),
        array('data' => t('From'),      'field' => 'from_address')
        array('data' => t('Date/Time'), 'field' => 'message_date',
          'sort' => 'DESC'),
      );

      $query     = 'SELECT message_subject, from_address, message_date FROM 
{basic_webmail_messages} WHERE user_id = %d';
      $tablesort = tablesort_sql($header, 'message_date DESC, ');
      $rows      = array();
      $result    = pager_query($query . $tablesort, 
variable_get('basic_webmail_messages_per_page', '25'), 0, NULL, $user->uid);
      while ($row = db_fetch_array($result)) {
...
?>

What I end up with when using the second snippet above is a query that looks 
like this:

SELECT message_subject, from_address, message_date FROM basic_webmail_messages 
WHERE user_id = 30 ORDER BY message_date DESC, message_subject DESC

and a table that doesn't sort at all.

Is there a way of doing what I want?

Thank you for any help you can offer.

-- 
Jason Flatt
http://www.oadaeh.net/
Father of Six:  http://www.flattfamily.com/ (Joseph, 14; Cramer, 12; Travis, 
10; Angela; Harry, 7; and William, 12:04 am, 12-29-2005)
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