[Xesam] Sorting API to be more flexible

[Jos van den Oever]

2008/6/13 Urho Konttori <urho.konttori at nokia.com>:
> We have been evaluating the Xesam for multiple uses at Nokia and one of
> them is media player use. In many cases, where all the songs need to be
> listed, they need to be listed with three sorting criteria: Artist,
> Album, Track#. Xesam provides only two sorting criteria. Now, you might
> argue that the application should do the tertiary sorting, but then if
> we say that, then why two sorting criteria, or one?
>
> I'm quite sure this is not the only use case where tertiary sorting (or
> even more) would be beneficial.
>
> Also, the API looks a bit glued when you have primary and secondary
> sorting as the session properties. Why not instead change it to an array
> of sort criteria? So, as to call it just sort.fields?
>
> It would be very good if this sort of change could still be done to the
> xesam 1.0 spec, either next to the current primary and secondary
> sorting, or better yet, as the only way to set the sort order. It would
> be much cleaner way to do it.
>
> Anyway, I'm looking forward to comments on the subject.

I agree with your suggestion.
We would also need a way for the server to specify what type of
sorting it supports.
For example a readonly property: sortableFields and a property that
says how many sorting fields can be used.
Some servers may not support sorting at all (grep) or allow only
sorting on one field.

Cheers,
Jos