Short answer: If you've got an array, and want to sort it, use the sort_by
method:
orders = orders_list.sort_by{|order| "#{order.sort_column} #{order.sort_direction}"}
Long answer: The reason your original code doesn't work is that in this case
Order.in_process.order("#{sort_column} #{sort_direction}")
you are building a query. in_process
is a named scope (passing in some conditions), and .order
tells rails what to order the query by. Then, when it runs out of chained methods, the query executes (runs some sql) and gets the records out of the DB to build a collection of objects.
Once you are working with a collection of objects, you can't call the .order
method on it, as that's just used to assemble an sql query. You need to use Array#sort_by
instead. sort_by
takes a code block, into which is passed each object in the collection (as order
in my example but you could call it anything, it's just a variable name).
BTW, if you just want to call a method on all the objects to sort them, you can use a "shortcut syntax" like .sort_by(&:methodname)
. This uses a little trick of ruby called Symbol#to_proc
(http://railscasts.com/episodes/6-shortcut-blocks-with-symbol-to-proc).
So, for example, if there was a method in Order like so
def sort_string
"#{self.sort_column} #{self.sort_direction}"
end
then you could change your code to
orders = orders_list.sort_by(&:sort_string)
which is neat.