Controlling output order

Manual

Parameters

Controlling output order

DPL3 allows you to define the sort order of its output, as is explained below.

ordermethod

ordermethod

Sets the criteria used to order the list by; often combined with order=descending for descending sort (otherwise ascending is default); or, alternatively, may be combined with headingmode.

Syntax:

ordermethod=method1,method2,... ordered by method1 first, then by method2, etc., (like the ORDER BY clause in SQL).

methodN can be one of the following single values (which will be sorted in ascending order by default, see order):

Method	Description
categoryadd	Orders list based on the most recent addition to the category specified (requires the 'category' parameter, only one category can be included to work). See sortkey for sorting by page order in a category.
counter	Orders list based on the number of times the page has been viewed (by ~popularity). Note: Requires the HitCounters extension for wikis on MediaWiki 1.25.0 or higher since the counter feature was removed; this extension is not yet available on Miraheze wikis.
size	Orders list based on the size of the article (bytes of wiki text).
firstedit	Orders list based on first edit to the pages (creation).
lastedit	Orders list based on the most recent edit to the pages.
pagetouched	Orders list based on 'page_touched' timestamp. Read the comment on the page_touched field in Page_table to see the difference from most recent edit by an author.
pagesel	Orders list based on the names of the reference pages which are used in the selection of a linksfrom or linksto statement. pagesel only makes sense if there is more than one page mentioned in the linksfrom or linksto condition.
title	Orders list sorted by article (prefix +) title.
titlewithoutnamespace	Orders list sorted by the article name regardless of namespace.
sortkey	Orders list sorted by (category) sortkey (is ordered by sortkey of the first category specified, if there are multiple); requires at least one category statement. Sortkey provides either the default category sort order (alphabetical), or a sortkey can be manually specified on each page in the category. Since sortkey relates directly to the sorting order of pages in one category, sortkey functions as an alias of sorts for "category".
none	Do not apply any ordering (except ordering by timestamp if you requested a list of revisions); this method is set by default if openreferences is set.

methodN can also be one of the following combination of values (which will be sorted in ascending order by default, see order):

Method	Description	Note
user,firstedit	Orders list sorted by user, then by last edit.	If the user who did the first or last edit is nonexistent locally (an editor from page import), the user link appears escaped on-page.
user,lastedit	Orders list sorted by user, then by first edit.
title,firstedit	Orders list sorted by title, then by lastedit by any user.
title,lastedit	Orders list sorted by title, then by firstedit by any user.
titlewithoutnamespace,firstedit	Orders list sorted by title (without the namespace), then by firstedit by any user.
titlewithoutnamespace,lastedit	Orders list sorted by title (without the namespace), then by lastedit by any user.
For use with headingmode, see headingmode.
Method	Description	Use
category,title	Orders list sorted by category, then by title.	The first argument sets each category as a heading and orders by The second argument sets MethodN as the order of article results under each category heading; if used without headingmode, these values will cause unwanted duplication of results. Requires at least one category statement. Note: If pages in the result set belong to more than one category, all categories are listed and the results will appear more than once in the output. See headingmode for more information.
category,firstedit	Orders list sorted by category, then by first edit.
category,lastedit	Orders list sorted by category, then by last edit within a category.
category,pagetouched	Orders list sorted by category, then by pagetouched.
category,sortkey	Orders list sorted by title and (category) sortkey; requires at least one category statement and a sortkey must be set on at least one of the output pages.

Example:

{{#lsth:Examples/Parameter: ordermethod (example 1)|Example}}

Test in sandbox

View Result

Result:
{{#lsth:Examples/Parameter: ordermethod (example 1)|Result}}

order

order

Controls the sort direction of the list; a value of descending requires ordermethod to be set, so that DPL3 knows which criterion (or criteria) to sort by.

Syntax: order=orderdirection

orderdirection can be one of:

• descending — Depending on the criteria set, largest to smallest, most to least, 9 to 0 and/or Z to A
• ascending — Depending on the criteria set, smallest to largest, least to most, 0 to 9 and/or A to Z — (default, need not be set)

Example:

{{#lsth:Examples/Parameter: order (example 1)|Example}}

Test in sandbox

View Result

Result:
{{#lsth:Examples/Parameter: order (example 1)|Result}}

ordercollation

ordercollation

Defines the collating sequence for ordering. Allows individual collations, makes case-insensitive sorting possible.

Syntax: ordercollation=latin1_german_ci

Notes:

• For case insensitivity during the selection of articles, see ignorecase.
• You may want to try latin1_swedish_ci or other collation mapping table names as well. If you use a name for the first time, you should make sure that it is spelled correctly. Otherwise, you will see a SQL error message.
• A special (proprietary) function can be used to sort card suit symbols according to the rank of suits that is used in the card game of bridge (this cannot be done by standard collating sequences). To trigger this function, set ordercollation=bridge.

Other ways to sort

tablesortcol

{{#lsth:Examples|tablesortcol}}

Using JavaScript

In some cases, DPL3 sorting features are sufficient; think of the following example:

• You create a list of pages which use a certain template.
• You want to show the value of the first parameter each page uses when calling that template. This can easily be done with the include feature of DPL.
• If you now wanted the output to be sorted by the value of that parameter, DPL3 could not help because it had to analyze all articles before finding those parameter values.

But there is another way:

• Create a sortable wiki table (using the table option of DPL3 with class="wikitable sortable") and you can click on the column headings to sort your output accordingly. However, the initial order shown in that table will still be the order in which DPL3 parsed the wiki pages (usually an alphabetical order of the page names).

Using a handful of JavaScript lines, you can sort a wikitable on pageLoad by any column. You must insert that JavaScript code AT THE END of your page:

  sortables_init();
  // sort the first sortable table; change [0] to sort other tables.
  tab = document.getElementsByTagName("table")[0];
  // sort by the first column; change [0] to sort by other columns.
  hdr = tab.getElementsByTagName("th")[0];
  // get the sort button link
  lnk = hdr.getElementsByTagName("a")[0];
  ts_resortTable(lnk);

Before version 1.16 of MediaWiki, wikibits.js was typically called at the end of a page and performed sortables_init(). Calling it explicitly did not result in it being recognized, but rather resulted in adding a second set of sort link buttons.