I have a $_POST variable (let’s call it DatesString that contains a string of comma-separated, ANSI-formatted dates like this:
DatesString = “2021-03-20,2020-12-31,2021-02-28”
I wanted to retrieve the earliest day in the list and assign it to a variable called FirstDate. I thought of this approach:
Create an array DatesArray from the string of dates.
Sort that array in ascending order
Retrieve the first element
I did #1 as follows:
DatesArray = {{$_POST.ClaimedDates.split(’,’)}}
When trying to do #2 I found that the Formatter > Collections > Sort function asks for a Property of my array, presumably to sort by. I don’t know what to put there and the formatter does not let me exit leaving that field blank. Am I using the right function to sort an array? If so, what should I put where it asks me for Property?
When trying to do #3, I could not find any function in Formatter > Collections to extract a specific element of an array. I thought of using the code view of the Formatter and typing something like this:
FirstDate = {{ SortedDates[0] }}
Would this be correct?
Alternative approach:
I also thought of using the Formatter > Collections > Min function with the DatesArray created before to return the minimum element, and avoid sorting and selecting. The problem is again that this function asks for a property to evaluate and I don’t know what to put there.
You can try putting in some random string in the property field while selecting the formatter.
Then, in the code tab in the picker, just remove the property part.
This usually works.
Sorting dates is a bit weird thing. They get treated as strings. From your example, I see that your are using “yyyy-mm-dd” format, which should work well for sorting. Any other format, and you might get into some issues.
I’m wondering now if the behaviour I’m observing is a bug.
Unfortunately, what Sid suggested did not work, but if it had worked, then it speaks poorly of the UI and it should be fixed.
I tried to see if the sort function behaves differently if I knew what property to select. To test that hypothesis, I created another Array but this time I loaded it with the results of a database query. I then applied the Formatter > Collections > Sort and selected one of the columns as Property. This time, instead of obtaining a sorted array I also received a true.
@Teodor, please let me know if I need to raise this as a bug through a separate request. If I’m using these functions improperly, please tell me how I should use them.
