Comparator definition redundancy

[gbedardsice]

When using Backbone.Pageable in client mode with Backgrid, I found that if I wanted to replace the default comparator function, I had to override it at two places. Here and here in Backgrid.

This seems odd to me. Is there any reason setSorting could not take a comparator or even a makeComparator option?

[wyuenho]

You generally don't need to override _makeComparator. setSorting is a convenient function that will create a comparator and set it to the collection for you.

I'm curious tho, what problem is the default behavior causing you that you need to override the default comparator?

[gbedardsice]

I'm using a natural sort comparator. I know I should probably rely on server side paging for this type of operation, but right now it's not possible for me.

[wyuenho]

Sometime I wish JS had operator overloading :)

I didn't anticipate this use case and I just assumed whatever you are sorting on will have a natural order comparable by the language's default comparison operators.

Another reason is that in the case the collection is not a pageable collection, a comparator will need to be generated and attached to the collection.

Lastly, the reason setSorting doesn't take a comparator is because besides setting a comparator to the collection, I also need to know the order in order to change state.order. I wouldn't know that just by looking at the comparator.

[wyuenho]

So I think if you are using backgrid and pageable, and need to supply your own comparator, you pretty much have to override it in 2 places.

[gbedardsice]

Yeah, it is tricky. Thanks for answering.