Sorting with Default Value

[Jamie Choi]

It is possible to sort with a field like this:

<div class="tc-table-of-contents">
<<toc-selective-expandable "content" "sort[toc-order]">>

</div>

But is there any method to give a default value to toc-order inside the sort field, e.g. to give default value of 0 to posts without the field toc-order?

[S. S.]

Jamie,

I haven't understood what you mean by "sort[toc-order]"

However I will try and give you some kind of answer that may or may not be what you want.

In the tiddler that holds the toc-selective-expandable macro, if you have a field, say call it list-order, and that field is used as a ListField, and it contains a list of all your tiddlers tagged content in the order you desire for them to appear - then the below should list all your tiddlers in the same order that you have them in the list-order field.

<div class="tc-table-of-contents">
<<toc-selective-expandable "content" "enlist{!!list-order}">>
</div>

Hope it works!

Edited post to correct code: changed Variable to content

[S. S.]

Ha! Apologies!

You just need to make a field called list and put in the tiddler order there!

Quoting from the documentation tiddler: Table-of-Contents Macros

At each level, the tiddlers can be ordered by means of the list field of the parent tag tiddler.

Let us know if you get stuck.

Regards.

[Eric Shulman]

On Thursday, March 28, 2019 at 4:04:57 AM UTC-7, S. S. wrote:

I haven't understood what you mean by "sort[toc-order]"

The second parameter of the toc-selective-expandable macro uses filter syntax to apply a sort order to the set of tiddler being displayed at each level of the tree.

"sort[toc-order]" means "sort the list of tiddlers by the value in the "toc-order" field of each tiddler.

Thus, if each tiddler has a "toc-order" field containing a number then when those tiddlers are shown in the tree, they will be sorted based on those numbers.

The problem is that tiddlers where the "toc-order" field is missing (or blank or non-numeric) are sorted AFTER the tiddlers that do have a defined value for "toc-order", and Jamie was asking how to get these un-numbered tiddlers to default to being placed BEFORE the sorted ones.

Note: for his purposes, Jamie should be using "nsort[toc-order]", which does a NUMERIC sort, rather than an ALPHABETIC sort.  With alpha sorting, a sequence of numbers like "1 2 3 10 11 21 22" will be sorted as "1 10 11 2 21 22 3".

However, just like the sort[...] filter, nsort[...] also puts missing/blank/non-numeric values at the end of the list.  So, although nsort[...] is correct, it still doesn't solve the original problem.

-e

[S. S.]

Eric,

Thanks for that explanation! I had not absorbed that concept properly.

A small test shows that when using sort[toc-order] or nsort[toc-order] - the empty/non-existent toc-order values go to the top of the list, followed by those that have a value of 0, then the other numbers below.

So depending on what one wants, doing a !nsort[toc-order] might accomplish what is needed.

Otherwise, perhaps use the Tiddler Commander Plugin to add the field and the wanted values to all the tiddlers without that field quickly.

Regards

[Jamie Choi]

Thank you for your reply. "nsort[toc-order]" is indeed the way to go. I will show an example here:

• Post "Home" with toc-order = -1
• Post "Book" with no toc-order
• Post "Events" with no toc-order
• Post "Footer" with toc-order = 1

Using "sort[title]nsort[toc-order]", the list is:

• Home
• Book
• Events
• Footer

It seems that it does have an default value of 0 if I use nsort instead of sort, which is what I should be doing. Thanks for everyone's help here!

[Mohammad]

Added to TW-Scripts

[Mohammad]

Added to TW-Scripts