Views sorting with list item text

Question

I have a list field (category) associated with content type

Fruit|Good Fruit Meal|Fantastic meal Thai Coffee|Coffee

In views, I used sorting as category ascending. Now, I expected result to be sorted as: Coffee, Fantastic meal and Good Fruit. BUT it is sorting using value of list item as: Fruit, Meal and Thai Coffee.

Is there any way I can sort it using list item text but not with list item value?

Thank you.

Answer 1

The best way to accomplish this is to use a term reference field rather than a list field, for a number of reasons:

• The taxonomy module is made specifically for categorizing things, so it's a natural fit for a "Category" field.
• You don't have to edit your Category field every time you want to add options; you can simply add more taxonomy terms. This is better for Features-driven development (assuming you've exported your fields to code).
• You can sort by the taxonomy terms' titles in Views by using a Views relationship between the node and the term via the term reference field.

AFAIK, there is no way to sort by value labels in a list field like you're trying to do. I'd definitely recommend going with a term reference field instead.