Question about sorting

[Sylvio]

In the api documentation it states:

Only fields that have their "autojoin" checkbox checked in Setup > Fields can be used for sorting pages. So if you need to be able to sort pages by particular fields, check to make sure they are "autojoin". If they aren't already, you can set them to be.

I have a field called newsdate which I use as a key for sorting and I don't have it set as autojoin, but the sorting still works (I tried it by reversing the order)!

Why is that?

[apeisa]

Sorting on API will work without autojoin.

This sorting that your quote references is page children sorting (in admin when you edit page -> children (tab) -> sort settings. This means default sort when using admin.

[Sylvio]

thanks, I see that I didn't read the docs properly, 'pages' is mentioned twice in the quote