Sorting by private field inverts ascending and descending options

Omeka S Themes
1

We have a site where we have records of people and the Title is fist name last name (John Smith). But we want to add the ability to sort by last name. I created an IsVersionOf field and put just the last name in the field. Since we didn’t want this field to display I marked the field as private.

In the browse.phtml file I then added the label/value pair to the field sort menu.

However, when I sort by that field, it does the exact opposite of any other field. So Ascending is Z-A and Descending is A-Z.

If I mark the field as public, then it works just fine. Ascending is A-Z and Descending is Z-A. So the issue is that it is marked as private. But I have no idea as to why it is inverting the sorts.

2

You’re sure it’s sorting in reverse order, vs. just not sorting by the value at all?

Hide Properties is probably the better choice for just removing a property from view but still having it be used by the public in some way (like for sorting). Private values are handled at a lower level, and are really intended for pieces of information that shouldn’t be accessible at all.

3

I tested it three times and it was definitely sorting when I toggled between ASC and DESC in the opposite way it was intended.

I’ll look into Hide Properties. Thanks.

4

Hide Properties was perfect. Thanks for the suggestion!