Question

Grabbing delimited dates from database and adding new ones to the list, then want to put all dates in correct order of the date.

<cfparam default="" name="newDates">
<cfloop index="tm" from="#form.arrive#" to="#form.depart#" step="#createTimespan(1,0,0,0)#">    

<cfset newDates = newDates & '#dateFormat( tm, "mm/dd/yyyy" )#,'>

</cfloop>
<cfset penddate = '#pmonthlist#, #newDates#'>

How Can I take the results of this.

7/15/2012,7/16/2012,7/17/2012,7/18/2012,7/19/2012,7/20/2012,7/21/2012,9/21/2012,9/22/2012,9/28/2012,9/29/2012, 04/01/2012,04/02/2012,04/03/2012,04/04/2012,04/05/2012,04/06/2012,04/07/2012,

And make it into the correct date order like this. (this is the results I want)

04/01/2012,04/02/2012,04/03/2012,04/04/2012,04/05/2012,04/06/2012,04/07/2012,7/15/2012,7/16/2012,7/17/2012,7/18/2012,7/19/2012,7/20/2012,7/21/2012,9/21/2012,9/22/2012,9/28/2012,9/29/2012

Answer 1

UPDATE: Solution #0 – just sort them using arraySort(dates, 'numeric') (doesn’t work in Railo), see: http://www.cfgears.com/index.cfm/2010/10/7/Using-an-array-to-sort-dates

Solution #1 – sort an array of dates

1. Turn the list of dates into an array using ListToArray()
2. loop through the array and DateFormat() them as YYYYMMDD
3. ArraySort(dates, 'numeric')
4. loop through the dates again and DateFormat() them back to M/D/YYYY
5. ArrayToList()

Solution #2 – use Query of Queries

1. if you have a query object with records of dates, skip to step 2.
2. set myQuery as QueryNew(‘MyDate’,’Date’)
3. loop through the dates, and add them into the query using QueryAddRow() and QuerySetCell()
4. use Query of Queries: SELECT MyDate FROM myQuery ORDER BY MyDate
5. ValueList(myQuery.myDate)

Solution #3 – use Java

1. turn list of dates into an array
2. loop through the array, use javacast to cast each date as java.util.Date
3. invoke sort() in java.util.Collections on the array

Solution #4 – use DateCompare()

1. turn list of dates into an array
2. write your own sorting algorithm (insertion sort? bubble sort?), using DateCompare() to compare dates.

Solution #5 – use DB temp table

1. insert into a temp table
2. select them out using ORDER BY