Issue using Order By in Simulation Aids module for a datetime column?

3rd Party Modules
1

Recently started using the Simulation Aids module.

One thing I cannot figure out - doing a ORDER BY DESC type clause. I want to order by a datetime column in a dataset
image

and am trying to order by date descending.

I looked at the sample project and saw ORDER BY -t_stamp and tried it with a hyphen like
view("* ORDER BY -Date_Entered", {Root Container.Table_Items.tableData})

but this gets me the error

Exception: Error executing expression binding on
List Records.Root Container.Table_Items.data
	caused by ExpressionException: Unable to execute view
	caused by Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<expression:view>", line 66, in <module>
TypeError: bad operand type for unary -: 'java.util.Date'

So I am not sure what I am missing here. I hope its ok to message you about this directly.

Tagging module creator @pturmel

2

The answer when the column is an object is to find a number conversion (or conversion to tuple of numbers). For dates, try adding .time, like so:

view("* Order By -Date_Entered.time", ....)
1 Like
3

This worked for me, thanks Phil.

4

I don't have any idea how you're actually doing things, but you could potentially sneak in a check for Comparable, no?

5

If you look at the generated jython, you will realize I’m just using list.sort(), not any java action. Theoretically I could re-implement with a java code generator and transient classes, but that makes my head hurt.

1 Like
6

Since you’re here, before Phil responded I tried using system.dataset.sort() to do this but this doesn’t seem to work on a java.util.Date type column. I don’t know if that’s expected or not.

7

system.dataset.sort seems to work for me, in a quick test.

8

Hmm. Working for me too now. I must have done something wrong before. You can ignore that post.