Sorting and Filtering

Sorting and filtering do not change or reorder the actual data in the table, but only its visible presentation.

You can sort the rows of a Data Table being edited or viewed. To enable sorting, click the column header. Clicking a header already used for sorting will reverse the sorting order.

To sort table by multiple columns, click them in a desired sort priority order while holding Ctrl key down.

If an object list is used as the data source for the editor, sorting rules update caused sorting of the whole object list rather than currently displayed records only. Thus, re-sorting may completely change currently visible records.

There are several ways to filter data in a Data Table Editor.

Enter some text in filter text field located in the Data Table Editor toolbar (and indicated by a looking glass icon). Table contents will be filtered to show only rows matching to the filter.

Context menu of the filter bar provides the following operations:

Hover mouse over a column header cell and a Quick Filter icon will pop up in this cell. Click on this icon and select field values that should be shown. Records with other field values will be filtered out.

Advanced Filters are an intuitive interface for the user to create complex, custom filters. When the Enable Advanced Search property of a Data Table component is checked, the user can add any number of type-appropriate filtering parameters from the filter menu. In the case that these filter options are not sufficient, filters of arbitrary complexity can be implemented with an expression and applied immediately to the table via the Advanced Filter toolbar.

The Advanced Filter toolbar is managed with a handful of tools:

Icon	Operation
	Show the Advanced Filter toolbar.
	Hide the Advanced Filter toolbar.
	Opens a checkbox menu with a list of all fields that can be filtered. Checking a field creates an Advanced Filter for the field. Similarly, unchecking a field removes any filters applied to that field.
	An Advanced Filter Button appears for each field selected for filtering under the Set Filters menu. The button text indicates the name of the field being filtered, and a preview of the filter criteria being applied. Clicking the button opens a menu of all type-appropriate criteria to apply when filtering the field.
	Toggle between Custom Filtering Expression and Advanced Filters.
	Applies the filtering described by the Custom Filtering Expression.

When the Advanced Filter Button is clicked for a field, a criteria menu is displayed with filtering options appropriate to the field type being filtered. For example, a string-type field will have filter criteria “Equals”, “Contains” and so on, while a numeric-type field will have criteria like “Equals”, “Greater Than”, and so on.

When the user edits one of the filtering criteria Equals, Doesn’t Equal, or Included In, the first few unique values of the field are displayed as items in a dropdown menu to give them an idea of possible values. Users can fuzzy search the unique values of the field by simply entering a value in the criteria field.

Switching to the Custom Filtering Expression hides the Advanced Filter Buttons and reveals an input field for an expression expression. The Custom Filtering Expression is evaluated for every row of data. All rows where the expression evaluates as True will be displayed, and all other values will be excluded from the filter result.

The Custom Filtering Expression has the following Resolution Environment:

Consider the following example of a complex filter that can be implemented with the Custom Filtering Expression:

Suppose a database of employee information includes fields totalHoursWorked and totalExpendedSickLeave, and the filter must return a list of all employees with a ratio of totalHoursWorked to totalExpendedSickLeave less than 83. Such a filter requires that the values of two fields be compared for each row, which can be done only with the expression language.

An expression which filters for the desired result would be as follows:

{totalHoursWorked} / {totalExpendedSickLeave} < 83

This expression evaluates to True when the ratio of totalHoursWorked to totalExpendedSickLeave is less than 83, and as a result, only employees meeting this criteria will appear in the filtered table.

If an class instance list is used as the data source for the editor, filtering rules update cause filtering of the whole class instance list rather than currently displayed instances only. Thus, new filtering rules may completely change currently visible records.

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