Ordering attributes within a node

ATK Howto: Ordering attributes within a node Complexity: Basic Author: Ivo Jansch <ivo@achievo.org>

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Ordering attributes within a node

If you have an atkNode, attributes (i.e. database columns) appear in the order in which they are added via atkNode::add().

If you have an atkMetaNode (or derived class), fields appear in the order in which they appear in the database. To control the order in which attributes appear within a node (i.e. on a "page"), use atkMetaPolicy::setOrder(), atkMetaPolicy::setIncludes() or the $order argument to either atkMetaNode::add() or atkMetaPolicy::add().

For example:

public static function meta(atkMetaPolicy $policy) {
  $policy->add("invoice_start_date", "atkDateAttribute");
  $policy->add("invoice_end_date", "atkDateAttribute");

  $policy->setOrder(array(
    "invoice_start_date",
    "invoice_end_date"
  ));
}

(In the case of atkMetaNodes, the order in which attributes are added has no effect because they configure themselves via database metadata, and attributes are added to nodes before both the settings from atkMetaNode::meta() are applied, and the atkMetaNode::postMeta() method is run--"adding" an attribute via either of these methods reconfigures an existing attribute. Attributes will appear in the order in which they are added in a constructor, but this is discouraged.)