How to adding our own sorting to a view on Drupal?

Question

I have develop a drupal view with table format.

• Here table rows are Name and Date.
• I am sorting a Name column with default sorting in views,it's working fine.
• But when user click on views page automatically views page redirected to default sorting in views.
• Here problem is when user click on sorting with (asc/desc) that order permanently store in database.

how can we achieve this.

Answer 1

You could alter your view query with hook_views_query_alter to add your custom sorting.

<?php
/**
 * Implementation of hook_views_query_alter
 * @param type $view
 * @param type $query 
 */
function mymodule_views_query_alter(&$view, &$query) {

  //simple example: change the order of the master display
  //if you want to do it only  on a certain display add something 
  // like  "&&$view->current_display == 'panel_page_1'"
  if ($view->name == 'VIEWNAME') {

    //to find out what the fieldname ist: use devel and add your desired field as 
    //first filter ( =>orderby[0]). install devel and uncomment the next line
    //dpm($view->query->orderby)

    $view->query->orderby[0]['field'] = "CASE FIELD_NAME WHEN 'apple' THEN 1 WHEN 'zebra' THEN 2 WHEN 'banna' THEN 3 ELSE 4 END";
  }
}
?>