CMS Made Simple Forums

Anastasis wrote: When you add new categories into the News module, it appends each new item to the end of the list. It would be useful if there was the option to display this list sorted or even better to determine the order, but even a simple sort would be better than now. For the end user adding new news items with a lot of different categories it would speed entry and reduce the likelihood of error by missing a category.

Is this possible or does it require a code change? Maybe it could be worked around by having a script to sort the categories records in the database that could be used every time categories are updated as a sort of housekeeping task?

sortby="news_date" - Field to sort by. Options are: "news_date", "summary", "news_data", "news_category", "news_title". Defaults to "news_date".

browsecat="1" - Shows a browseable category list.

Anastasis wrote: Thanks Alby for your reply.

However, doesn't this only affect the output of the website page in the browser. I want to be able to sort the category list in the admin when adding news articles so when a new category gets added it doesn't appear last in the list of categories.

Or have I misunderstood?

substitute:
$query = "SELECT * FROM ".cms_db_prefix()."module_news_categories ORDER BY hierarchy";

with:
$query = "SELECT * FROM ".cms_db_prefix()."module_news_categories ORDER BY long_name";

Anastasis wrote: Thanks again. I cannot find a function.admin_categoriestab.php in my /modules/News folder. There are some action. and method. php files but not this one. Am I looking in the wrong place?

        echo $this->StartTab('categories', $params);

        #Put together a list of current categories...
        $entryarray = array();

        $query = "SELECT * FROM ".cms_db_prefix()."module_news_categories ORDER BY hierarchy";

        $query = "SELECT * FROM ".cms_db_prefix()."module_news_categories ORDER BY long_name";

Anastasis wrote: Alby - thanks again.

Just got round to changing and testing this and it doesn't seem to make any difference. The category list is displayed in the same order in the Categories combo on the Articles tab and likewise on the Categories tab.

EDIT: I tell a lie - well an honest mistake! 

The list on the Categories tab is now sorted but not on the Articles tab - which would be the place an Editor selects from - is not. Is there a way to get that to sort the same?

$query = "SELECT * FROM ".cms_db_prefix()."module_news_categories ORDER BY hierarchy";

$query = "SELECT * FROM ".cms_db_prefix()."module_news_categories ORDER BY long_name";

alby wrote: Ok, for full sort replacement, substitute:

$query = "SELECT * FROM ".cms_db_prefix()."module_news_categories ORDER BY hierarchy";

with:

$query = "SELECT * FROM ".cms_db_prefix()."module_news_categories ORDER BY long_name";

there are:
1 substitute in action.addarticle.php
1 substitute in action.editarticle.php
3 substitute in action.defaultadmin.php

Anastasis wrote:

alby wrote: Ok, for full sort replacement, substitute:

$query = "SELECT * FROM ".cms_db_prefix()."module_news_categories ORDER BY hierarchy";

with:

$query = "SELECT * FROM ".cms_db_prefix()."module_news_categories ORDER BY long_name";

there are:
1 substitute in action.addarticle.php
1 substitute in action.editarticle.php
3 substitute in action.defaultadmin.php

Absolutely perfect - thanks Alby. Brilliant!

I cannot understand why the default sort order for this is by hierarchy. It makes no sense either when adding categories or using them when working as an editor. You would always want them to be sorted alphabetically wouldn't you, particularly as the sort respects the parent/child categories as well?

For what reason are they sorted the way they are by default?