Symphony.

I’ve only found an older related post not very helpful for my situation.

In the current DE-Editor, is it possible to sort a datasource of, let’s say CDs, first by Artist, then by release date? Is there some sort of chaining possible?

E. g. artist:release_date

Not that I am aware of... If you don't have pagination, you can probably sort the first level with DS and second level with XSLT.

Alexander, maybe you could have two DSs for these.

Anyway, do you mean this sorting 1) to be as redundant? Or 2) to just have two available ways to view the CD's list.

As for 2) you could have those two DSs and condition their run with Conditionalizer.

I also think there are some parameters that can used to control the sort order, but I always forget these.

Update: Actually as of Symphony 2.5x you might not need the Conditionalizer for this, you could use the new Required and Forbidden parameter option of datasources to condition their run.

@Juraj that’s not exactly what I was looking for. I guess it could be achieved by grouping the output too.

Let’s say I have:

Artist     Album             Year
Led Zep    Presence          1976
Genesis    Foxtrot           1972
Led Zep    Houses of the …   1973
Genesis    Nursery Crime     1971
Led Zep    III               1970
Genesis    The Lamb lies …   1974

It should be sorted (in this case grouped) after Artist, and in the artist grouping after year:

Artist     Album             Year
Genesis    Nursery Crime     1971
Genesis    Foxtrot           1972
Genesis    The Lamb lies …   1974
Led Zep    III               1970
Led Zep    Houses of the …   1973
Led Zep    Presence          1976

I guess grouping really IS the answer. As long as there are no more than two levels of sorting involved.

I had in mind this third usecase but didn't wanted to overcomplicate it in the first run.

I am also using grouping for alphabetically sorting surnames in first-letter groups, works great.

Did you manage with grouping?