Is it possible to sort entire selection by nested fields?

[leemarlow]

I see it's possible to sort nested collections, but is it possible to sort entire selection by nested fields?

query {
    Items(
        order: {
            brand: {
                name: 'DESC'
            }
        }
    ) {
        select {
            id
            name
            brand {
                id
                name
            }
        }
    }
}

would return

"Items": {
    "select": [{
        "id": 3,
        "name": "aaa"
        "brand": {
            "id": 31,
            "name": "zzz"
        }
    }, {
        "id": 1,
        "name": "ccc"
        "brand": {
            "id": 11,
            "name": "yyy"
        }
    }, {
        "id": 2,
        "name": "bbb"
        "brand": {
            "id": 22,
            "name": "xxx"
        }
    }]
}

[igdianov]

@leemarlow Thanks for asking. Current orderBy argument support is limited only to fields in the root selection, i.e.

query {
    Items  {
        select {
            id
            name(orderBy: ASC) # works 
            brand {
                id
                name(orderBy: DESC) # Does not work yet... 
            }
        }
    }
}

I have already been thinking about deprecating field level orderBy in favor of something like this, i.e.,

query {
    Items (
        orderBy: { 
           id: ASC, 
           brand: {  
              name: DESC
           }
        }
    ) {
        select {
            id
            name
            brand {
                id
                name
            }
        }
    }
}

It could be useful to support variable bindings for orderBy as well, i.e.

query($orderBy: ItemsOrderByClause) {
    Items (
        orderBy: $orderBy
    ) {
        select {
            id
            name
            brand {
                id
                name
            }
        }
    }
}

And pass $orderBy variable as Json at runtime:

"variables": {
      "orderBy": { 
           "id": "ASC", 
           "brand": {  
              "name": "DESC"
           }
     }
}

What do you think?

[leemarlow]

@igdianov I like that approach and think it could easily support multi-sort like you showed. However, I think nested (collection) sorting currently works according to #22.

[igdianov]

@leemarlow Right! I forgot about this. This method is not the best for performance, because it creates an additional query for each parent record.

[MurrayFurtado]

@igdianov Does multi sort work on the top level entity as of yet, or are we limited to just one orderBy column?