76369 - datasource rdf:files loads tree in arbitrary order.

Status: VERIFIED INVALID

(Core Graveyard :: RDF, defect)

Description

[Peter Wilson]

Using the rdf:file datasource to load an XUL tree widget give randomly ordered 
contents. PNG and XUL source attached.

Comment 1

[Peter Wilson]

Attachment: PNG image of displayed directory tree.

Comment 2

[Peter Wilson]

Attachment: XUL source for tree display

Comment 3

[Chris Waterson]

-> dougt. Result of recent checkins.

Comment 4

[Doug Turner (:dougt)]

reporter, in your application, can you explictly sort instead?  

Comment 5

[Peter Wilson]

Re: can you sort yourself.

Hardly, the <template> mechanism is used to load the tree - so I have no control 
over this process. 
The alternative is not to use the RDF:file datasource (or RDF), and load the 
tree by using the nsIFile interface to access the local file system. This is 
obviously less elegant (and a lots more code) than the template mechanism.

I know your problem is due to the lack of implicit order in tripple stores.
This is likely to be a general problem. So a general solution would be good.

The datsource interface needs some way of imposing order on the returned 
results - akin to a view in sql. This would then apply to loading a grid, or 
other repeating structure, and not just a tree.  

Comment 6

[Peter Wilson]

Sorry my fault.
The code in filePicker.xul shows how to do this correctly.
I coppied my code from an XUL tutorial at xulplanet.com.
Have sent message to them also.

Comment 7

[benc]

-> RDF

VERIFIED:
trying to shrink <tever>'s resolved list.

Peter, if you have a reason why you invalidated this, please put it here for 
the record. TIA.

Comment 8

[Peter Wilson]

I closed this problem as I was not using (aware of) the sort attributes:

<treecol  id="FilenameColumn" resource="http://home.netscape.com/NC-rdf#Name" 
sortActive="true" sortDirection="ascending"/>

This sorts the files/directories into name order. It is not quite correct as you 
would need to sort by the concatentation of isDirectory(DESCENDING) + Name to 
get the usual sequence with directories first. 

Comment 9

[Robert John Churchill]

>  This sorts the files/directories into name order. It is not quite
> correct as you  would need to sort by the concatentation of 
> isDirectory(DESCENDING) + Name to get the usual sequence with
> directories first. 


Borrowing from a quote of mine in bug # 107133:

In general, I disapprove of code that FORCES users to see all directories before
all files.  Remember: while some platforms do display items that way, other
platforms don't... so, its best to make it optional; give the user the default
for their platform, and allow them to change it if they prefer.