Question

I’ve got the following cursor set up to fill a dialog box with a users payment history

Cursor PaymentsCursor = db.getReadableDatabase().rawQuery(
                "SELECT _id, Date, Payment FROM tblPaymentHistory WHERE DebtName = '"
                        + debtname + "'" + "ORDER BY _id ASC", null);
        SimpleCursorAdapter HistoryAdapter = new SimpleCursorAdapter(this,
                R.layout.paymenthistoryrow, PaymentsCursor, from, to);

The problem is though that if there is more than one type of debt, and payments are made to each debt out of order, when the payment history returns it’s results, it returns as out-of-order row numbers, for example 1,2,6,7,9,12,etc. I know it’s pulling the _id (unique key) from the database, but is there a way to re-base or change the row number in the query, so that each result returns as "1,2,3,4,5,etc" regardless of original ID?

I thought that the ORDER BY _id or even ORDER BY Date ASC would fix this but it didn’t.

My rows in the database look something like this:

1, TEST, 4/13/2012, 250
2, TEST, 4/13/2012, 300
3, TEST, 4/14/2012, 222
4, TEST2, 4/14/2012, 500
5, TEST, 4/15/2012, 600

When the user clicks history for "TEST", it returns back as 1,2,3,5… and if they pull up history for "TEST2", it shows as "4", I’m trying to get it so TEST shows "1,2,3,4" and TEST2 shows "1"

Damn I can’t answer my own answer, but here’s what I ended up doing:

Thanks guys. I found an alternate option that modified the view, so as not having to touch the SqLite db. heres the link that i foundModifying SimpleCursorAdapter's data

And here is the result:

PaymentsCursor = db.getReadableDatabase().rawQuery(
            " SELECT _id, Date, Payment FROM tblPaymentHistory WHERE DebtName = '"
                    + debtname + "'" + "ORDER BY _id ASC", null);

    String[] from = new String[] { DbAdapter.KEY_HISTORY_ID,
            DbAdapter.HISTORY_DATE, DbAdapter.HISTORY_PAYMENT };

    int[] to = new int[] { R.id.PAYMENTNO, R.id.PAYMENTDATE,
            R.id.PAYMENTAMOUNT };

    SimpleCursorAdapter HistoryAdapter = new SimpleCursorAdapter(this,
            R.layout.paymenthistoryrow, PaymentsCursor, from, to);

    HistoryAdapter.setViewBinder(new SimpleCursorAdapter.ViewBinder() {
        @Override
        public boolean setViewValue(View view, Cursor cursor, int column) {
            if (column == 0) { // let's suppose that the column 0 is the
                                // date

                TextView tv = (TextView) view;
                String rownum = String.valueOf(cursor.getPosition() + 1);
                // here you use SimpleDateFormat to bla blah blah
                tv.setText(rownum);

                return true;
            }
            return false;
        }
    });

    paymenthistory.setAdapter(HistoryAdapter);

It may not be the most glamourous way, but now each time the window comes up with the history, it’s using the row number (plus one) to indicate which # it is.
Thanks all!

Answer 1

Here is one way to get the “re-based” ids. In this example, the “new ids” are based on the grade (i.e. the “old ids” in your case):

.headers on

create table foo (name text, grade int);

insert into foo values ('Joe', 45);
insert into foo values ('Anna', 98);
insert into foo values ('Julie', 78);

select name, 
       grade, 
       (select count(*) from foo t1 where t1.grade>=t2.grade) as rank  
from foo t2;

select name, 
       grade, 
       (select count(*) from foo t1 where t1.grade>=t2.grade) as rank  
from foo t2
order by rank;

Having saved this as foo.sql, I get this:

[someone@somewhere tmp]$ sqlite3 < foo.sql 
name|grade|rank
Joe|45|3
Anna|98|1
Julie|78|2
name|grade|rank
Anna|98|1
Julie|78|2
Joe|45|3