I'm trying to create an alphabetical listing of items that have been stored as DataObjects using the DOM, so that I get something like: http://www.hans.org/directory/

I need to have it separated in two columns (A to M, and N to Z), so was thinking of having 2 functions that each return a range of entries, and then perform some function in the view to control what gets displayed.

However, as SS doesn't like PHP in the view templates, does anyone know how to do this in the controller? Would I need to store each character as it's own array with the returned array? Or is there a more straightforward way of doing it?

If I was writing this in (fugly) PHP the first function would run something like:

$qry = "SELECT title, LEFT(title, 1) AS first_char FROM resourceobjects 
        WHERE UPPER(LEFT(title, 1)) BETWEEN 'A' AND 'M' ORDER BY title";

$result = mysql_query($qry);
$current_char = '';
while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {
    if ($row['first_char'] != $current_char) {
        $current_char = $row['first_char'];
        echo '<h2>' . strtoupper($current_char) . '</h2>';
    }
    echo '<p>' . $row['title'] . '</p>';
}  

Any help much appreciated :)

Yikes. Don't work so hard.

private function getColumn($dir)
{
return $this->MyObjects("SomeField $dir 'n'", "SomeField ASC");
}

public function LeftColumn()
{
return $this->getColumn("<");
}

public function RightColumn()
{
return $this->getColumn(">");
}

Haha, yeah I have a tendency to over engineer :) Thanks for the uber quick response as always!

How would I then cycle through the generated arrays displaying the first character as a heading, then that characters entries in a list?

I'm getting confused over what has to be done in the controlller, and what's possible in the view!

EDIT: What does the MyObjects method do? I'm getting an error when I run this code - should I replace that line with a call to the DB?

Actually ignore the bit about the MyObjects - it's been a long day :)

I borrowed code from this post: http://silverstripe.org/archive/show/7069#post7069

And came up with:

private function MyObjects($thisfilter, $orderby) {
        $objects = DataObject::get("DirectoryCategory", $thisfilter, $orderby, "", "");
        if($objects) {
            $output = '<ul>';
            foreach($objects as $object) {
                $output .= "<li>$object->DirectoryCategory</li>\n";
            }
            $output .= '</ul>';
        }
        return $output;
    }

Which is a great starter for 10...

MyObjects() is an example placeholder. You should be using the name of the relation in your class. So if you're listing the component People, then you should use $this->People();

That function is a really ugly example of mixing HTML and PHP. You can do something a lot better than that.

Do you need to display the letter even if there are no listings under it?

Ahh, righto - I see how that connects the objects now, and yes it's pretty ugly code - I was going for quick and dirty, so that I could then generate the letter as heading next :)

And no, if the letter doesn't have an entry it doesn't need to display.

So I've got the list now returning two columns nicely (thanks UC!), but still can't work out how to make it create a list like this:

A
Aadvark
Anteater

B
Badger
Bear

C
Cat

etc

Does anyone know how to do this with the returned array, or do I need to go back to mixing my PHP and HTML like the oldschool way?

No, there's never any reason to do that. It's a terrible, deprecated practice that's about has about as much validity as font tags.

You could do this..

private static $alpha = array ('a','b','c','d','e'....);

public function Letters()
{
$set = new DataObjectSet();
$letters = self::$alpha;
$filter =  "SomeField > '$letter'";
$filter .= ($next = next($letters)) ? " AND SomeField < '$next'" : "";
foreach($letters as $letter) {
$set =>push(new ArrayData(array(
'Letter' => $letter,
'Listings' => $this->SomeObjects($filter, "SomeField ASC")
)));
}
return $set
}

<% control Letters %>
<h3>$Letter</h3>
<% if Listings %>
<ul>
<% control Listings %>
<li>$SomeField, $AnotherField, etc..</li>
<% end_control %>
</ul>
<% else %>
There are no listings for the letter $Letter.
<% end_if %>

You may have to tweak it a bit, but you get the idea...