Flex AS3 Arraycollection sorting based on Array of values - apache-flex

Question

I have been working on sorting Arraycollection like ascending , descending the numeric list. Total length of my collection will go up to 100. Now I want to preform sort to nested data like this
Data Structure
Name : String
Categories : Array ["A","x or y or z","C"]
Categories array will have maximum 3 items , out of that three items the second item can have 3 different values either X or Y or Z. My result data looks like here
{"Mike" , ["A","x","C"]}
{"Tim" , ["A","y","C"]}
{"Bob" , ["A","x","C"]}
{"Mark" , ["A","z","C"]}
{"Peter" , ["A","z","C"]}
{"Sam" , ["A","y","C"]}
anyone please explain how to sort this type of data in a way showing all "x" first , "y" next and "z" at the last and vice a versa. Any help is really appreciated. Thanks Anandh. .

Answer 1

You can specify a compare function in your SortField like this:
var sortfield:SortField = new SortField("Categories");
sortfield.compareFunction = myCompare;
var sort:Sort = new Sort();
sort.fields = [sortfield];
yourCollection.sort = sort;
and your compare function:
function myCompare(a:Object, b:Object):int {
/*
return -1, if a before b
return 1, if b before a
return 0, otherwise
*/
}
or something like that.. and it's untested code :)

Answer 2

I have created a new property to the data structure called categoryOrder In the setter I did the following and Am using the categoryOrder for sorting - sortBy = categoryOrder;. I understand little hard coding is needed but still I believe this will reduce the number of comparisons when I use compareFunction. Anyone please valid this idea. Thanks!
public function set categories(data:ArrayCollection) :void
{
if(data != null)
{
_categories = data;
for each(var categorie:Object in data)
{
switch(categorie.categoryName)
{
case "x":{categoryOrder = 1;break;}
case "y":{categoryOrder = 2;break;}
case "z":{categoryOrder = 3;break;}
}
}
}
}
Data Structure
Name : String
Categories : Array ["A","x or y or z","C"]
categoryOrder : Number