Tutorials

Server Sorting

Preface

There are 2 ways to enable sorting for grid.
The first one is static sorting on client side.
To enable sorting on client side it requires to add property sortable: true to columns.
To enable server sorting it requires to do more actions.
Let us learn it.

Data

We assume that you have data base filled with sql from previous sample.

CREATE DATABASE `company`;
USE `company`;

CREATE TABLE `staff` (
  `id` int(11) AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `name` VARCHAR(50),
  `surname` VARCHAR(50),
  `country` VARCHAR(50),
  `position` VARCHAR(50),
  `email` VARCHAR(50),
  `age` INT,
  PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
);

INSERT INTO `staff` (`id`, `name`, `surname`, `country`, `position`, `email`, `age`) VALUES
(1, "Taylor", "Davis", "Netherlands", "DevOps", "[email protected]", 36),
(2, "Isabella", "Scott", "Australia", "PHP Developer", "[email protected]", 39),
(3, "Chloe", "Woods", "Sweden", "C++ Developer", "[email protected]", 23),
(4, "Ivan", "Richardson", "Singapore", "C++ Developer", "[email protected]", 28),
(5, "Ivan", "Brown", "Taiwan", "Data Science Engineer", "[email protected]", 24),
(6, "Ella", "Brown", "Sweden", "ASP.NET Developer", "[email protected]", 32),
(7, "Elizabeth", "Scott", "USA", "iOS Developer", "[email protected]", 43),
(8, "Peter", "Johnson", "Taiwan", "C++ Developer", "[email protected]", 42),
(9, "Randy", "Martin", "Netherlands", "C++ Developer", "[email protected]", 27),
(10, "Michael", "Phillips", "UK", "Software Tester", "[email protected]", 23),
(11, "Ed", "Brown", "San Marino", "Python Developer", "[email protected]", 33),
(12, "Luis", "Richardson", "Netherlands", "Software Tester", "[email protected]", 22),
(13, "Ed", "Johnson", "Australia", "ASP.NET Developer", "[email protected]", 44),
(14, "Gavin", "Garcia", "Belgium", "DevOps", "[email protected]", 26),
(15, "Taylor", "Howard", "Taiwan", "JavaScript Developer", "[email protected]", 42),
(16, "Orlando", "Scott", "Ireland", "Frontend Developer", "[email protected]", 26),
(17, "Chloe", "Taylor", "Finland", "Java Developer", "[email protected]", 21),
(18, "Jacob", "Hill", "Japan", "Python Developer", "[email protected]", 25),
(19, "Paula", "Scott", "Netherlands", "Data Science Engineer", "[email protected]", 23),
(20, "Lily", "Miller", "Austria", "JavaScript Developer", "[email protected]", 35);

Client side code

Let's prepare HTML and js code.
We would need to add property remoteSort: true. 

<html>
  <head>
  
  <link href="https://cdn.fancygrid.com/fancy.min.css" rel="stylesheet">
  <script src="https://cdn.fancygrid.com/fancy.min.js"></script>
  
  <script>
	document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", function() {
	  new FancyGrid({
		renderTo: 'container',
		width: 550,
		height: 500,
		data: {
		  remoteSort: true,
		  proxy: {
		    url: 'load.php'
		  }
		},
		selModel: 'cell',
		cellTrackOver: true,
		defaults: {      
		  resizable: true,
		  sortable: true,
		  draggable: true
		},
		columns: [{
		  index: 'name',
		  title: 'Name'
		}, {
		  index: 'surname',
		  title: 'SurName'
		}, {
		  index: 'country',
		  title: 'Country'
		}, {
		  index: 'position',
		  title: 'Position'
		}, {
		  index: 'email',
		  title: 'Email'
		}]
	  });
	});
  </script>
  </head>
  <body>
    <div id="container"></div>
  </body>
</html>

Server side code

We will use 2 files.
The first one is light class for connecting to DataBase.

DB.php


<?
class DB {
  public $host = "localhost",
	$dbuser = "user_name",
	$dbpassword = "password",
	$dbname = "company";

  function __construct(){
	$this->connect();
	$this->mysql_select_db();
  }
	
  function connect(){
	mysql_connect($this->host,$this->dbuser,$this->dbpassword) || die('could not connect to db');		
  }
	
  function mysql_select_db(){
	mysql_select_db($this->dbname) || die('could not select db');
  }
}
?>
The second file is exactly reading data from DataBase.
Very important moment is sending headers.
It requires to send Content-Type that is equal to application/json.
And some extra code special for sorting.

load.php


<?
  header('Content-Type: application/json');

  require_once("DB.php");
  $db = new DB();
  
  $sort = '';
  $dir = '';
  
  if( isset($_GET['sort']) && isset($_GET['dir']) ){
    $sort = $_GET['sort'];
    $dir = $_GET['dir'];
  }
  
  $sql_query = "SELECT * FROM `staff`";
  
  if( $sort != '' ){    
    $sql_query .= " ORDER BY `$sort` $dir ";
  }
  
  $result_db_request = mysql_query($sql_query);
  for($dataArr=array();$row=mysql_fetch_assoc($result_db_request);$dataArr[]=$row){}
  
  $data = '[ ';
  
  for($i = 0, $iL = count($dataArr); $i < $iL; $i++){
    $data .= '{ ';
    $row = $dataArr[$i];
    
    $data .=  '"id": '. $row[ 'id' ] . ',"name": "'. $row[ 'name' ] . '","surname": "' . $row[ 'surname' ] . '","position": "' . $row[ 'position' ] . '","country": "' . $row[ 'country' ] . '","email": "' . $row[ 'email' ] .'"';

    $data .= '},';
  }
  
  $data = substr($data, 0, -1);
   
  $data .= ']';
  
  $responce .= "{\"success\":true,\"data\": $data}";

  echo $responce;
?>

Live Sample

Server Sorting

Method

By default method is 'GET'.
To change method it requires to set it for every requests type. 

data: {
  proxy: {
    methods: {
      create: 'POST',
      read: 'POST',
      update: 'POST',
      destroy: 'POST'
    },
	...
  }
}