Using $page->add($items) ordering

[Pete Jones]

We have a fairly complicated sorting requirement  where we are ordering by pages and then by the condition of a checkbox within a repeater, within each page. There are subsequent 2 sorting criteria that are applied.

We have split the 3 sort conditions into 3 different selectors which we are then adding to a PageArray.

When using $items->add($firstsortedarray) the sorting is ok, when we then add subsequent arrays the ordering of the overall array breaks.

Is there a difference in the way ->add works compared to ->append?

[LostKobrakai]

https://github.com/ryancramerdesign/ProcessWire/blob/master/wire/core/WireArray.php#L716-L726

[Pete Jones]

hmm ok must be something else then. Thanks LostKobrakai.

If we wish to specifically control the order of the PageArray (using a key) should we need to add the key in or should the order of the PageArray remain unchanged when we add items?

[Craig]

In a previous project that needed a specific manual sort, I had some success setting the page field value to a string of IDs in order.
 

$page->items = "1045|1067|1125|1256";

So you could build up a list of IDs in whatever order you want, and then implode() them into the otherPages value when saving the main page.