4.5. Loaded attributes and default sorting management

• The class attribute fetch_attrs allows to define in an entity class a list of names of attributes that should be automatically loaded when entities of this type are fetched from the database using ORM methods retrieving entity of this type (such as related() and unrelated()). You can also put relation names in there, but we are limited to subject relations of cardinality `?` or `1`.

• The cw_fetch_order() and cw_fetch_unrelated_order() class methods are respectively responsible to control how entities will be sorted when:

  • retrieving all entities of a given type, or entities related to another

  • retrieving a list of entities for use in drop-down lists enabling relations creation in the editing view of an entity

By default entities will be listed on their modification date descending, i.e. you’ll get entities recently modified first. While this is usually a good default in drop-down list, you’ll probably want to change cw_fetch_order.

This may easily be done using the fetch_config() function, which simplifies the definition of attributes to load and sorting by returning a list of attributes to pre-load (considering automatically the attributes of AnyEntity) and a sorting function as described below:

In you want something else (such as sorting on the result of a registered procedure), here is the prototype of those methods: