Allow the classic natural sort on string columns

Problem

There is often a need to do natural sort on string columns. Machines’ sort is not always sensible for humans. https://blog.codinghorror.com/sorting-for-humans-natural-sort-order/

Prisma doesn’t support this currently in v2.7.1.

Suggested solution

Either configured at schema level for the desired column, or by passing a param to orderBy.

Alternatives

Discussed https://github.com/prisma/prisma/discussions/3693

Additional context

ASC (12 should be the last one!)

DESC (6 should be the last one!)

[meotimdihia]

Today, I find out this answer: https://stackoverflow.com/a/67975489/329424 If you use Postgresql then it can be sort natural by default.

– First create a collation with numeric sorting CREATE COLLATION numeric (provider = icu, locale = ‘en@colNumeric=yes’);

– Alter table to use the collation ALTER TABLE “employees” ALTER COLUMN “em_code” type TEXT COLLATE numeric;

[meotimdihia]

@janpio but $queryRaw doesn’t handle plat to nested data. This is what I am using for my website:

async function getChapters(
  prisma,
  chapter,
  checkVol2Chap1
): Promise<chapters[]> {
  let order = Prisma.sql`naturalsort("chap") DESC NULLS LAST, naturalsort("vol") DESC NULLS LAST, naturalsort("title") DESC NULLS LAST`

  if (checkVol2Chap1) {
    order = Prisma.sql`naturalsort("vol") DESC NULLS FIRST, naturalsort("chap") DESC NULLS LAST, naturalsort("title") DESC NULLS LAST`
  }

  const chapters = await prisma.$queryRaw<any>`
    SELECT a.id, a.hid, a.vol, a.title, a.chap, a.group_name, a.lang, chapters_groups.group_id FROM chapters a
    LEFT JOIN chapters_groups ON chapters_groups.chapter_id = a.id
    WHERE status IN ('ok') AND comic_id = ${chapter.comics.id} AND lang = ${chapter.lang}
    ORDER BY ${order} 
  `
  const r = []
  let i = 0
  for (const chapter of chapters) {
    if (chapter.id != r[i]?.id) {
      if (r[i]) {
        i++
      }
      r[i] = Object.assign(chapter, { chapters_groups: [] })
    }

    if (chapter.group_id) r[i].chapters_groups.push(chapter.group_id)
  }

  return r
}

I find libs that could convert plat to nest data but there is no good library.

Knex don’t do it too. I dunno how everyone use knex. There may be some things that I don’t know about.