['pages_order_by']='meta:custom' strips content if meta is duplicated about phile

[james2doyle]

bump @NeoBlack

[NeoBlack]

Yes, this is a problem or a bug. We can add a counter, if key exist, this way no page will be lost.

[james2doyle]

That would be cool. Then the priority when there is a conflict would be ordered by filename right? since that is the default page order when first read from the directory?

[NeoBlack]

result would be:

test
test_1
test_2

if three pages has the sorting value "test"

[james2doyle]

Ok so for something like meta.date how would that work? You wouldn't want to augment the actual value of the meta property

[NeoBlack]

maybe we have here an other problem. meta:date will be handled as any other meta information (parsed as string), but should be set automatic to the file modification date!?

[james2doyle]

I dont think so. Because if you modify a file then it would jump to the "top" of the list. So updating articles that were published in the past would make it look like they were new.

Or are you saying that a conflicting attribute would then be resolved based on which file is newer? I still think that using the alphabetical filename to resolve conflicts might be easier. In this case:

puppies-are-fun.md
  • meta.title = Puppies Are Fun
  • meta.date = 2014/02/10
kittens-are-cute.md
  • meta.title = Kittens Are Cute
  • meta.date = 2014/02/10

In this case kittens would be at the top if ordered by date. Because K comes before P.

[NeoBlack]

ok, right. no automatic detection. but 2014/02/10 would be 2014/01/10_1, 2014/01/10_2 etc. otherwise we should define a second sorting, eg:

$config['pages_order_by']='meta:date,meta:title'

if only one meta field is in config, a conflict will be solved by adding the counter.

[james2doyle]

Frank I think I know what you are saying after looking at the code in the Phile\Repository. This would be a simple solution right now:

// semi pseudo code
if (isset($sorted_pages['_'.$page->getMeta()->get($metaKey)])) {
  $sorted_pages['_'.$page->getMeta()->get($metaKey).'_'.$counter] = $page;
} else {
  $sorted_pages['_'.$page->getMeta()->get($metaKey)] = $page;
}
$counter++;

In this case Frank is right, having 2 sorts would be nice because, personally, I would want to go by Title after the custom meta is done.

[NeoBlack]

ok, here is my solution for sorting with counter if only one sorting key is defined:

$sorted_pages = array();
foreach ($pages as $page) {
    if ($page->getMeta()->get($metaKey) !== null) {
        $key = '_'.$page->getMeta()->get($metaKey);
        if (array_key_exists($key, $sorted_pages)) {
            $counter = 1;
            $tmp = $key;
            while (array_key_exists($tmp, $sorted_pages)) {
                $tmp = $key . '_' . $counter++;
            }
            $key = $tmp;
        }
        $sorted_pages[$key] = $page;
    } else {
        $sorted_pages[] = $page;
    }
}

if we have more then one sorting key defined, the sorting logic is a little bit more complex, but possible :)

[kursusHC]

Thanks Franck I've just tested it and it works very well !

Indeed it would be awesome to have several meta for sorting : if the first one is not present the second one is selected. That would prevent things like ordering menu items with a quite irrelevant "date" value.

[NeoBlack]

We will fix this bug and close this issue. I open a new issue as feature request for sorting by multiple fields.