Django: django-tables2 Changing default sort behaviour

Question

I'm experimenting with django-tables2. I've created a test site that displays a column of dates (created by timezone.now()). By default, the dates are ordered Oldest->Newest. If I click on column header, the dates are displayed in reverse order (the desired default behavior).

I've played around with the order_by argument, but I'm doing something wrong. My tables.py:

class OrderTable(tables.Table):
    order_date = tables.Column(order_by=("Order Date",))

My views.py:

def index(request):
    table = OrderTable(Order.objects.all())
    RequestConfig(request, paginate={"per_page": 10}).configure(table)
    return render(request, 'orders_app/index.html', {'table': table})

How can I order the "Order Date" column so its displayed as Newest->Oldest?

Answer 1

Just prefix a '-' before the column name to reverse the order. You can supply order_by at the time of initializing the table.

def index(request):
    table = OrderTable(Order.objects.all(), order_by="-order_date")
    RequestConfig(request, paginate={"per_page": 10}).configure(table)
    return render(request, 'orders_app/index.html', {'table': table})

---

See order_by:

The default ordering. e.g. ('name', '-age'). A hyphen - can be used to prefix a column name to indicate descending order.

Also, see specifying alternative ordering for a column

Answer 2

You can either set ordering on your queryset like this:

table = OrderTable(Order.objects.order_by('-Order Date'))

or using the table object directly:

table = OrderTable(Order.objects.all())
table.order_by = '-Order Date'