Creating An Ascii Check and Count - coldfusion

Question

Basically i've created a search page on my website and I need to display each band name/track/location A-Z. I've successfully listed every band in alphabetical order, however i want one half of the page to have 0-9, A-L on it and the other to have M-Z. Is there a way of using Ascii checks + count to check the first letter of each band and call them to the correct alphabet group? Thanks.

Answer 1

It sounds like you want to split up a query into sets based on the first letter of a string. In CF 10 or Railo 4, you could use Underscore.cfc's groupBy function to accomplish this like so:
_ = new Underscore();
bands_by_name = _.groupBy(bands, function(band) {
var first_letter = left(band.name, 1);
if (isNumeric(first_letter))
return '0-9';
else if (first_letter <= 'L')
return 'A-L';
else
return 'M-Z';
});
groupBy(collection, callback) iterates through a collection, applying the callback function to each item and using the return value to group the collection items into a new struct.
In this case, the bands_by_name struct would have the keys 0-9, A-L, and M-Z, each containing an array of structs containing the relevant results. Example:
{
'0-9': [{name: '1 Band', track: 5, location: 'CA'}, {name: '2Cool', track: 1, location: 'NM'}],
'A-L': [{name: 'Good Band', track: 2, location: 'NY'}],
'M-Z': [{name: 'Some Band', track: 3, location: 'PA'}, {name: 'What a Band', track: 2, location: 'NV'}]
}
Note: I wrote the Underscore.cfc library.

Answer 2

It's a little verbose but it allows for a quick change of columns by adding/changing ascii values to the list bandGroups. It assumes each column will have data.
<!--- syntax may very depending on database --->
<cfquery ...>
Select
bandName
, trackName
, location
, upper(left(bandName,1)) as firstLetter
from
someTable
order by
bandName
</cfquery>
<!---
create a list of ascii values used to break up your columns
this will allow you to easily change the number of columns
End first group at L , end next group at [ (first char after "Z")
--->
<cfset bandGroups = asc("M") & ',' & asc("[")>
<cfset thisGroup = 1>
<cfset header = '<div style = "float: left; width: #int(100/listLen(bandGroups))#%"><table>'>
<cfoutput>#header#</cfoutput>
<cfoutput query = "query" group = "firstLetter">
<tr>
<td colspan="3">
#query.firstLetter#
</td>
</tr>
<cfoutput>
<tr>
<td>#query.bandName#</td>
<td>#query.trackName#</td>
<td>#query.location#</td>
</tr>
</cfoutput>
<cfif query.recordCount eq query.currentRow or asc(query.firstLetter) gte listGetAt(bandGroups, thisGroup)>
<cfset thisGroup++>
</table>
</div>
<cfif query.currentRow neq query.recordCount>
#header#
</cfif>
</cfif>
</cfoutput>