AS3 sortOn woes

Question

Hi all, I have an Array called alarmQueue. I'm pushing a new arrays in to it with the contents [hours:int, minutes:int, seconds:int] and I'd like to use alarmQueue.sortOn() to sort the queue of alarms Ascending but I'm having problems getting my head around the logic.

// the function to push the alarm in to a queue
public function setAlarm(_hours:int = 0, _minutes:int = 0, _seconds:int = 0):void
{
    var alarmAsArray:Array = new Array(_hours, _minutes, _seconds);
    alarmQueue.push(alarmAsArray);

    alarmQueue.sortOn([0, [1, 2]], Array.NUMERIC | Array.DESCENDING);
    trace(alarmQueue);
}

I'm setting these alarms:

clock.setAlarm(1, 0, 31);  // alarm 1
clock.setAlarm(12, 1, 21); // alarm 2
clock.setAlarm(12, 1, 19); // alarm 3

and getting the following traces:

1,0,31
12,1,21,1,0,31
12,1,21,12,1,19,1,0,31

I seem to be ordering them as: alarm 2, alarm 3, alarm 1 but I want to be ordering them by hour, then minute and seconds.

Can anyone shed any light on my sorting woes? Cheers!

Answer 1

This should work, but I have not tested it.

public function setAlarm(_hours:int = 0, _minutes:int = 0, _seconds:int = 0):void
{    
  alarmQueue.push(
  {
    hours: _hours,
    minutes: _minutes,
    seconds: _seconds
  });

  alarmQueue.sortOn(['hours', 'minutes', 'seconds'], Array.NUMERIC);
}

Answer 2

Hi all, thanks for the feedback.

I've tested:

alarmQueue.push(
      {
       hours: _hours,
       minutes: _minutes,
       seconds: _seconds
      });

      alarmQueue.sortOn(
       ['hours', 'minutes', 'seconds'],
       [Array.NUMERIC | Array.ASCENDING, Array.NUMERIC | Array.ASCENDING, Array.NUMERIC | Array.ASCENDING]
      );

      if(alarmQueue.length == 3)
      {
       for(var i:int = 0; i SMALLERTHAN alarmQueue.length; i++)
       {
        trace(alarmQueue[i].hours,alarmQueue[i].minutes, alarmQueue[i].seconds);
       }
      }

I had to change the trace slightly due to the array items being objects now and used SMALLERTHAN as the < symbol seems to break to code tags here, but the app wouldn't compile as Flex Builder was telling me Array.ASCENDING not being a sort method, so I checked livedocs and found no mention of it there too. Any other guesses?

Answer 3

Found the answer after some tinkering. The default method of sorting is ascending but there's no option to set Ascending as a secondry sorting method. So by performing two sorts, the first descending on the minutes and seconds, the second is a sortOn the hours with no parameter applied so it sorts ascending!

var alarmAsArray:Array = new Array(_hours, _minutes, _seconds);
         alarmQueue.push(alarmAsArray);

         alarmQueue.sortOn([1, 2]);
         alarmQueue.sortOn([0], Array.DESCENDING);

         if(alarmQueue.length == 3)
         {
          trace(alarmQueue);
         }

this gives the correct output of: 12,1,19 12,1,21 1,0,31

Many thanks all! ant