Is there a way to order the results of a query with a non standard order?

Question

My site allows users to change the order in which categories and what categories are displayed, and it stores that order as an array in the db. so I have:

@categories = Category.where("id IN (?)", current_user.order)

the problem is order is something like [2,4,3,6,1] and then @categories has order [1,2,3,4,6]. I want to order the @categories so it matches the order. Any help would be appreciated

I ended up going with the solution listed [here](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/396748/ordering-by-the-order-of-values-in-a-sql-in-clause) — Bishop, Aug 01 '12 at 15:57

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 01 '12 at 15:27

0

Store user preferences in a separate table and then JOIN userOrderTable with @categories

answered Aug 01 '12 at 15:27

Germann Arlington

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score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 01 '12 at 15:37

0

Another approach might be to create an empty array and iterate over the Categories:

@categories = []
current_user.order.each do |category_id|
 @categories << Category.find(category_id)
end

answered Aug 01 '12 at 15:37

neon

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Is there a way to order the results of a query with a non standard order?

2 Answers2