dv.taskList Section Sorting

[AndreasBackx]

I wanted to have a list of uncompleted tasks and I was happy to see that dv.taskList nicely includes the page title which adds some nice context. I am sorting them based on creation date but realise that dv.taskList ignores this because of how DataArray.groupBy is implemented. So I thought to possibly make DataArray.groupBy respect the order of the input array. Though then one can debate that there can be multiple ways of ordering still.

If the following tasks are in the list: [task1-pageA, task2-pageB, task3-pageA], would you want it to show pageA or pageB first?

Regardless I was thinking of the following implementation changes to dv.taskList (though DataArray.groupBy could also be changed perhaps?):

Make dv.taskList accept a sorted map where the keys are the section titles and the values are the section items. dv.taskList would then not need to do any grouping itself and just skip to rendering. This seems like the most convenient solution, it would allow for using .map on a list of tasks and perhaps an additional step to collect it into an object.

Looking to hear what you all think. 🙂

[blacksmithgu]

Just to clarify - groupBy should respect the order of the input array, in the sense that it should be stable (elements within groups should retain their relative positioning). Does it not? I'm guessing the issue here is that the default JavaScript sort is not a stable sort?

[AndreasBackx]

Just to clarify - groupBy should respect the order of the input array, in the sense that it should be stable (elements within groups should retain their relative positioning). Does it not?

From my understanding when looking at the code, the items are sorted in ascending order according to the default comparator and put in an intermediate array.

let intermediate = this.sort(key, "asc", comparator);

What you're saying seems to be true from what I've seen in my own notes: items within groups respect their sorting order and its sorting is stable. The keys of the group however are not and this seems to me due to the above intermediate sorting. My questions would then be:

1. Should we be sorting the group differently by default?
2. If we should sort differently by default, the question on what behaviour we should have remains from my initial post: "If the following tasks are in the list: [task1-pageA, task2-pageB, task3-pageA], would you want it to show pageA or pageB first?".
3. Should we additionally make it possible to change how the groups are sorted so people who disagree with any default can change this?

Though while looking at this a bit closer, I realised the implementation already supports passing your own grouping:

export type GroupElement<T> = { key: Literal; rows: Grouping<T> };
export type Grouping<T> = T[] | GroupElement<T>[];

public taskList(tasks: Grouping<SListItem>, groupByFile: boolean = true) {

So that should actually satisfy question 3 and allow for any tuning anyone (including me) wants to do around this. I'll take it for a spin as soon as I find some time. 😄 The other questions still remain but I don't seem to be "blocked", so interested in hearing what you think.

[blacksmithgu]

The intermediate array is sorted by the thing you are grouping on, so groups should show up in whatever the default order is for the key. For links I think this is just lexicographical order of the full link path, which may produce undesirable results.

You can adjust this by then sorting the grouped array:

const array = dv.pages().file.tasks;
array.sort(k => k.due) // interior sort
   .groupBy(k => k.file.link) // group
   .sort(k => k.key.fileName()) // sort groups

I'm fine with adjusting default link comparisons to instead sort by file name instead of path name; I don't think it will break anything major.