Lesson 5.1

This lesson will teach you the following:

• Sorting
• Reverse Sorting

Introduction

You may have noticed that the Airtable API returns table records in an arbitrary (random) order by default.

For example, if you have the following list:

• Item 1
• Item 2
• Item 3

The API might return this:

• Item 3 (how did #3 get up here??)
• Item 1
• Item 2

How do we fix this so that our list items appear in a more logical order? There are a few possible approaches:

1. Pass the view query parameter in the API request
2. Pass the sort query parameters (field and direction) in the API request
3. Use JavaScript to sort the response data from the API

Instructions

Sort by Airtable view order

• Open TodoContainer.js
• Locate the fetch request for retrieving list items from Airtable API
• At the end of the URL, append a query parameter with name view and value Grid%20view (or the name of your view in Airtable if you changed it)
  • hint: URL query begins with a question mark (?) and is following by name/value pairs separated by an ampersand (name=value&name=value)
• Run your application and view in browser
  • Verify that the order of list items now matches the order seen in Airtable
  • In Airtable, open the corresponding table and drag/drop the last record above the first
  • Refresh your application and verify that the same list item now appears at the top

Sort by Airtable field

• Open TodoContainer.js
• Locate the same fetch URL from the previous section
• At the end of the URL, append the following query parameters (don't forget the & delimeter):
  • sort[0][field] with value Title
  • sort[0][direction] with value "asc" (short for ascending which means low-to-high or A-to-Z)
• View your application in browser
  • Verify that your list items now appear in alphabetical order by "Title"

Sort with JavaScript

• Open TodoContainer.js
• Locate the same fetch request from the previous section
• Inside the final then method, start a new line above the existing code
• Call the sort method on data.records and pass it a custom callback function:
  • function should take two parameters: (1) objectA and (2) objectB
  • function should compare the Title field for each object and return the following:
    • -1 if "Title A" is less than "Title B"
    • 0 if "Title A" and "Title B" are the same
    • 1 if "Title A" is greater than "Title B"
• View your application in browser
  • Verify that your list items still appear in ascending alphabetical order by "Title" (A-to-Z)

Now let's try reversing the order...

• Update the sort callback function to return the following:
  • 1 if "Title A" is less than "Title B"
  • 0 if "Title A" and "Title B" are the same
  • -1 if "Title A" is greater than "Title B"
• View your application in browser
  • Verify that your list items now appear in descending alphabetical order by "Title" (Z-to-A)

Stretch Goals

• Create a toggle button so the user can switch between ascending and descending sort order
• Sort by a different field, such as createdTime