Help:Sorting

In many situations, lists of page titles or user names are sorted alphabetically by MediaWiki. It is also possible to use JavaScript to sort lists of data that are included in page text.

Sort orderEdit

When lists are sorted alphabetically by MediaWiki, the order of characters is the same as the order of Unicode code points. That is, the usable character that comes first in the Unicode sequence (the space character) will be ranked highest in sorted lists; when an entry in the list begins with a space, that entry is likely to be at the top of the sorted list (unless another entry in the list begins with more than one consecutive space, of course).

Some more common characters are ordered as follows (in ascending order):

!"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_'
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz{|}~
¡¢£¤¥¦§¨©ª«­®¯°±²³´µ•¸¹º»¼½¾¿
ÀÁÂÃÄÅÆÇÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏÐÑÒÓÔÕÖ×ØÙÚÛÜÝÞßàáâãäåæçèéêëìíîïðñòóôõö÷øùúûüýþÿ
ĀāĂ㥹ĆćĈĉĊċČčĎďĐđĒēĔĕĖėĘęĚěĜĝĞğĠġĢģĤĥĦħĨĩĪīĬĭĮįİıIJijĴĵĶķĸĹĺĻļĽľĿŀŁłŃńŅņŇňʼnŊŋ
ŌōŎŏŐőŒœŔŕŖŗŘřŚśŜŝŞşŠšŢţŤťŦŧŨũŪūŬŭŮůŰűŲųŴŵŶŷŸŹźŻżŽžſ
ǺǻǼǽǾǿ΄΅Ά·ΈΉΊΌΎΏΐ
ΑΒΓΔΕΖΗΘΙΚΛΜΝΞΟΠΡΣΤΥΦΧΨΩΪΫάέήίΰ
αβγδεζηθικλμνξοπρςστυφχψωϊϋόύώ

CategoriesEdit

Categories are sorted differently from other lists. How exactly they are sorted depends on the configuration of the wiki, via $wgCategoryCollation. The default since MediaWiki 1.17 is the Unicode code point order as above, but with all the lowercase letters turned into uppercase letters. More complex orderings are also possible.

Sorting rows of a tableEdit

When a list of entries is included in a table on a page, you can use JavaScript to make the table 'sortable' (it is not possible to force a table to be sorted by a default order on page load). To do this, add the "sortable" class to the table declaration and make sure you defined headers using exclamations marks:

{| class="wikitable sortable"
|-
! Fruit   !! Price
|-
| Apples  || £0.95
|-
| Oranges || £0.85
|-
| Pears   || £1.15
|-
| Purple mangosteen || £1.05
|}

Which produces the following output:

Fruit	Price
Apples	£0.95
Oranges	£0.85
Pears	£1.15
Purple mangosteen	£1.05

By clicking on the buttons in the cell headers, the entries can be sorted by the value in that column, in either ascending or descending order.

Specifying a sort keyEdit

Depending on the wiki, data-sort-value can be used to specify a sort key. In MediaWiki versions prior to 1.22.0, $wgHtml5 needs to be enabled; beginning with version 1.22.0, this is no longer needed.

Example:

{| class="wikitable sortable"
! Name and Surname
! Height
|-
|data-sort-value="Smith , John George-Jackson"| John George-Jackson Smith
| 1.85
|-
|data-sort-value="Ray , Ian"| Ian Ray
| 1.89
|-
|data-sort-value="Bianchi , Zachary"| Zachary Bianchi
| 1.72
|-
|data-sort-value="Bianchi Maria , Adele"| Adele Bianchi Maria
| 1.82
|-
! Average:
| 1.82
|}

gives:

Name and Surname	Height
John George-Jackson Smith	1.85
Ian Ray	1.89
Zachary Bianchi	1.72
Adele Bianchi Maria	1.82
Average:	1.82

Sorting in categoriesEdit

Pages in categories are sorted by their title. This can be overridden by a sort key, see Help:Categories#Sort_key.

See alsoEdit

• For much more detailed instructions, see the wikipedia page.
• Manual:$wgCategoryCollation - allows you to change the collation used for categories (requires shell access).
• Unicode character references on the English Wikibooks
  • Initial characters
• Help:Sorting on Meta-Wiki