sort order should survive js/json

[juergmessmer]

It's an unpleasant experience that select options are not ordered the way they are prepared on the server side. Let's discuss if we could change this behavior without too much problems.

I should know, but I forgot, i tried to work around with StdClass objects, but I didn't achieve the desired result. I guess this concerns php and population the selects in js

[sabberworm]

I think we already support passing arrays to populate(), no?

[juergmessmer]

in widget.js populate() ? Yes, as far as the options are delivered/processed as key/value, but that doesn't effect the sort order, or am I mistaken?

[sabberworm]

So that’s what we need to do: serialize options as arrays, not objects.

[juergmessmer]

How to? a current example, how would I change this?

public function getLinkOptions($sLinkCategoryId, $sSortField) {
    $oQuery = VideoPlayerFrontendModule::getLinksQuery($sLinkCategoryId, $sSortField);
    $oQuery->select(array('Id', 'Name'));
    return $oQuery->find()->toKeyValue('Id', 'Name');
}

[juergmessmer]

The query already includes the order...

[juergmessmer]

Don't understand "serialize options as arrays, not objects", sorry :-) if I serialize the array of key values I get something like:

a:3:{i:26;s:31:"Back to the Middle (India Arie)";i:24;s:25:"Mr. Magic (Amy Winehouse)";i:25;s:32:"Never too much (Luther Vandross)";}

This is obviously the wrong serialized response, since js throws an TypeError: cannot use 'in' operator to search for 'length'

So what's a boy to do?

[sabberworm]

a:3:{i:26;s:31:"Back to the Middle (India Arie)";i:24;s:25:"Mr. Magic (Amy Winehouse)";i:25;s:32:"Never too much (Luther Vandross)";}

This is PHP serialization, not JSON serialization (which is what I meant).

It seems $oQuery->find()->toKeyValue('Id', 'Name') serializes to the following JSON:

{
  "26": "Back to the Middle (India Arie)",
  "24": "Mr. Magic (Amy Winehouse)",
  "25": "Never too much (Luther Vandross)"
}

(which is an object in JSON parlance).

What you need is an array:

[
  {"key": 26, "value": "Back to the Middle (India Arie)"},
  {"key": 24, "value": "Mr. Magic (Amy Winehouse)"},
  {"key": 25, "value": "Never too much (Luther Vandross)"}
]

[sabberworm]

In PHP, the following would work:

json_encode([["key" => 26, "value" => "Back to the Middle (India Arie)"]]);

or

$oValue = new stdClass();
$oValue->key = 26;
$oValue->value = "Back to the Middle (India Arie)";

var_dump(json_encode([$oValue]));

To get from the current to the desired state, use the following (I’m sure we have such a function already. Otherwise, add it to ArrayUtil.):

function transformOrderedKVForPopulate($aKV) {
    $aOrdered = [];
    foreach($aKV as $mKey => $sValue) {
        $oValue = new stdClass();
        $oValue->key = $mKey;
        $oValue->value = $sValue;
        $aOrdered[] = $oValue;
    }
    return $aOrdered;
}

Test:

$aKV = unserialize('a:3:{i:26;s:31:"Back to the Middle (India Arie)";i:24;s:25:"Mr. Magic (Amy Winehouse)";i:25;s:32:"Never too much (Luther Vandross)";}');

$aOrdered = transformOrderedKVForPopulate($aKV);

print json_encode($aOrdered, JSON_PRETTY_PRINT);

prints

[
    {
        "key": 26,
        "value": "Back to the Middle (India Arie)"
    },
    {
        "key": 24,
        "value": "Mr. Magic (Amy Winehouse)"
    },
    {
        "key": 25,
        "value": "Never too much (Luther Vandross)"
    }
]

as expected.

[juergmessmer]

I should have figured it out. I'm just too overwhelmed by...

Thanks a lot for your patience and the enlightening explanations!

I try to implement it in other places, the richtext/ckeditor might be a challenge :-)

[juergmessmer]

Actually I didn't serialize or json_encode the whole thing, just returned it from php like this:

    public function getLinkOptions($sLinkCategoryId, $sSortField) {
        $oQuery = VideoPlayerFrontendModule::getLinksQuery($sLinkCategoryId, $sSortField);
        $oQuery->select(array('Id', 'Name'));
        $aResult = array();
        foreach($oQuery->find() as $i => $aLink) {
            $aResult[$i]['key'] = $aLink['Id'];
            $aResult[$i]['value'] = $aLink['Name'];
        }
        return $aResult;
    }

and it work perfectly: is there a need to make stdClass objects, is it safer, or better code?

[sabberworm]

Yes, WidgetJSONFileModule does the serialization. If you read carefully you’ll notice I never said you needed to do that I only said: it’s what happens.

A stdClass is better because it always serializes to an object. For arrays, there are complicated rules for when they become JSON objects vs. when they become JSON arrays.

[juergmessmer]

Thanks, it looks simpler and cleaner too :-) (my memory...)

    public function getLinkOptions($sLinkCategoryId, $sSortField) {
        $oQuery = VideoPlayerFrontendModule::getLinksQuery($sLinkCategoryId, $sSortField);
        $oQuery->select(array('Id', 'Name'));
        return WidgetJsonFileModule::jsonOrderedObject($oQuery->find()->toKeyValue('Id', 'Name'));
    }

[juergmessmer]

I fixed most missing input order issues.