CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby-on-rails
Leahcim
Leahcim

Reputation: 41949

setting up database for sortable tables

probably a bit of a noob question...I got partway to solving it on my own but...

I'm making a basis application that has a database of legal decisions, which will be represented in a table that would preferably have sortable columns whereever that's possible. For example, I wish to be able to sort them by date.

I'll be using class methods for this

  def self.judgementdate
    order("judgementdate DESC")
  end

Questions: Should I create the column as a string or an integer? How should I enter the date into the database to make it most easily sortable. for example, should I enter January 27, 2012 as 

27/01/2012

or

"January 27, 2012"

or something else?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 53

Answers (2)

mu is too short
mu is too short

Reputation: 434685

You should use a date column to store dates, not string nor integer, date. Then the database will sort them just fine and even know how to manipulate them as dates; if you use some other type then you'll end up doing bizarre string mangling or a bunch of pointless (and probably incorrect in edge cases) arithmetic.

Upvotes: 1

Leahcim
Leahcim

Reputation: 41949

Silly me, after I posted the question, I realized I should just check the automatically generated created_at columns for the proper date format. so I'm entering date like this. Rails sorts it fine!

2012-07-26

Upvotes: 0

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