Sort collection:previous and collection:next alphabetically

[bruceontheloose]

Hello,

I would like the collection:previous and collection:next links to be sorted alphabetically (per a field such as title), rather than by date or manual sort order. The docs page for collection:previous says it's possible: "If you're on a single entry page and want to show previous entries in order (publish date, alphabetical, or manual), this is the tag you're looking for." (The collection:next page is similar.) But I can't get it to work. I get:

Exception
collection:previous requires ordered or dated collection

Here's the collection's config:

title: 'Test Alpha Sort'
template: test_alpha_sort/show
layout: layout
revisions: false
route: '/test/{slug}'
sort_dir: asc
date_behavior:
  past: public
  future: private

And here's the relevant template code (I've also tried sort="title:desc" and sort="title"):

{{ collection:previous in="test_alpha_sort" as="posts" limit="1" sort="title:asc" }}
  {{ if no_results }}
    <p>No more posts to read!</p>
  {{ /if }}
 
  {{ posts }}
    <p class="post">
      <a href="{{ url }}">{{ title }}</a>
    </p>
  {{ /posts }}
{{ /collection:previous }}

I know I can make that error go away by turning on Orderable and setting Max Depth to 1 via the Configure Collection page in the control panel, and then using sort="order" in the template, but that's not what I'm after.

How can I sort previous and next alphabetically?

I posted essentially the same question in the old forum in Sept right before it was archived in favor of Discussions here, so that might have been why it went unanswered. Hope you don't mind the repost.

Thanks in advance for any help,

Bruce

[edalzell]

Not sure you can sort a collection that has depth.

[edalzell]

Yup

[bruceontheloose]

Thanks a lot, @edalzell, I had seen that rule. I didn't mention this before, but I also had tried enabling Oderable and setting Max Depth to 1, and then trying to sort collection:previous by title, but got the same error. So the error message ("collection:previous requires ordered or dated collection") is a little off in that your collection can be ordered and you can still get the error. (For good measure, I also tried sorting collection:previous by title with a dated collection: same result.)

Going back to my initial case where the collection doesn't have Oderable enabled or a Max Depth set, sorting by title does work as expected with a typical collection tag such as:

<ol>
{{# This sorts in ascending alphabetical order, and sort="title:desc" reverses it #}}
{{ collection:test_alpha_sort sort="title" }}
  <li>{{ title }}</li>
{{ /collection:test_alpha_sort }}
</ol>

{{# Side note: using sort="title:asc" or no sort parameter gives the same result as sort="title" above. #}}

It's just collection:previous and collection:next that are problematic. So, perhaps the docs are incorrect where they say alpha sorting is possible with them.

[edalzell]

sounds like a bug, can you please create an issue?