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[akira54]

Hi,

Can anyone tell me whether it is possible to sort movies by the last name of the director? I have created a director view but it sorts by first name because that is how the names are automatically entered in the Director field. However, I often don't know/remember a director's first name. I don't want Kurosawa to be listed under A or Ozon under F. Of course I could manually change al entries but that is a lot of work. Is there any way of automating this?

[glynor]

It is possible, but challenging because [Director] might contain more than one name (it is a list type field).  MC 20 has some new tools for this, though.  If you want to get into it, read through this stuff (roughly from newest info to oldest info):

* http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=94134.0
* http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=80231.0
* http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=78210.0
* http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=89387.0
* http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=92092.0

It is hard when the data source can't be controlled, like the online metadata lookup.

[akira54]

Glynor thanks! I think your entry in 92092.0 might just do it.

[glynor]

Make sure to read down in this thread:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=94134.0

That function that MrC helped me build and that I posted about in 92092.0 is now built into MC.  It includes a Swap() and Unswap() expression now that does exactly that for you.

[akira54]

Wow, that was easy. I just added the function (Swap(field(Director)) to my theaterview tab "Director" and that was it. I haven't gone through yet to see how consistent the results are but first impressions are good. I wonder what happens with such names as "Margarethe von Trotta"?

... I did go through ...

Pity the expression cannot deal with such cases as "Joseph L. Mankiewicz" which ends up as "L, Mankiewicz Joseph". Glynor, your own expression works better and does give me "Mankiewicz, Joseph L." so that is quite an improvement. Did you ever sort out the problem of multiple entries?

PS. What I really like is that when you add the expression in TheaterView to a particular view (as the films grouped according to director), the expression dynamically updates the view without actually changing the tag values. It is very quick too.

[glynor]

I thought Matt had fixed Swap() and Unswap() to handle the same stuff as the expression I was using.  Bummer.  It is better, obviously, because it handles list-type fields, and mine does not.

Matt?

[Matt]

Pity the expression cannot deal with such cases as "Joseph L. Mankiewicz" which ends up as "L, Mankiewicz Joseph". Glynor, your own expression works better and does give me "Mankiewicz, Joseph L." so that is quite an improvement. Did you ever sort out the problem of multiple entries?

I'll take a look at that early next week.  Hopefully it can be upgraded to handle that without breaking anything else.

[akira54]

Thanks Matt, that would be great.

[glynor]

Thanks Matt, that would be great.

+1

[Matt]

Next build:
Changed: The Swap(...) expression finds the last space instead of the first space so that "My M. Name" becomes "Name, My M.".