Velocity Script Sorting CO Dates with Null Values

[Ajay_mamgain12]

@SanfordWhiteman I was going through some of your old discussions in community-related to sorting dates if there are null values included and you did mention you are going to publish an article soon with details. 

https://nation.marketo.com/t5/product-discussions/weirdness-using-sorter-sort-for-custom-object-list...

https://nation.marketo.com/t5/product-discussions/custom-object-multi-level-ordering-sorting/m-p/612...

Can you share the article link because I'm facing a similar issue and as I want to sort dates from a custom object which includes null values as well?

[Jo_Pitts1]

@Ajay_mamgain12 ,

In @SanfordWhiteman 's post that you referenced: https://nation.marketo.com/t5/product-discussions/custom-object-multi-level-ordering-sorting/m-p/612... he gives the answer.

I quote:

---

What you can do in the interim, and I hate to recommend it but have no choice right now, is loop over the list once and transform the null values into a representative value with the expected type:

#foreach( $item in $List_cList )
#if( !$item.Availability.class )
#set( $item.Availability = true )
#end
#if( !$item.availabilityUpdated.class )
#set( $item.availabilityUpdated = "0000-00-00" )
#end
#end

This works by checking to see if the values have a class. nulls won't have a class, so you can then set them to what you want the default to be. Then sort after that.

You can see he 'de-nulls' the dates by testing for a null class.  You can probably leverage that to achieve your desired goal

Once you've done that, you then sort as per the other references in the same post:

---

$sorter.sort($List_cList,["availabilityUpdated:desc","Availability:desc"])

---

Cheers

Jo

[Ajay_mamgain12]

@Jo_Pitts1 Thank you for the recommendation I did try the code however I'm not getting the list sorted by it.

#foreach( $item in $OpportunityList )
#if( !$item.mag_inttakeenddate.class )
#set( $item.mag_inttakeenddate = "0000-00-00" )
#end
#end

#set($oppList=$sorter.sort($OpportunityList, "mag_inttakeenddate:desc"))

 Do you have any other recommendations? It just shows the list without sorting the values. I can see that it has replaced nulls with 0000-00-00 however sorting is somehow not working as expected.

[SanfordWhiteman]

First: $sorter.sort returns a new list, so make sure you’re using $oppList, not the original list.

Second: what sort order do you actually want? Ascending order would place the previously-null items at the top.