Keybinding/command to change file sorting method on-the-fly

[keithfancher]

I'd love to be able to, e.g., quickly switch to a "recently modified" sort at times, but don't want that to always be the default.

Is this currently doable? Not sure if it's possible (or even desirable) to call setup() multiple times with different params via a keybinding, or if there would be an easier way.

Thanks!

[alex-courtis]

You can customise the sorting with your own function, see :help nvim-tree.sort_by.

You can define a mapping to flip between your desired sort configrurations. Here's a complete example: #1566 (comment)

We should add a recipe for this to the wiki. I'd be most grateful if you could do :)

[alex-courtis]

Works great as a temporary solution, but perhaps the long-term solution is to expose a function to change the sort method (and refresh) via the API? For my use-case at least, I don't need to track state or anything fancy... just binding different keys to different sort methods is plenty!

(And defining custom sort functions is also overkill for me -- I just want to change between a couple of the provided existing methods.)

How about something like this:

local my_sort_by_method = "name"

local my_sort_by_function = function(nodes)
  if my_sort_by_method == "name" then
    my_sort_by_method = "modification_time"
  else
    my_sort_by_method = "name"
  end

  return my_sort_by_method
end

Returning the method string would need to be built.

[alex-courtis]

Just new API:

api.tree.sort_by("modification_time")

[alex-courtis]

I'll get back to you.

[keithfancher]

Cool! Yeah, I think just exposing the sort_by via the API (for reads and writes) would let folks customize it to their heart's content.

I think this would also solve @petobens request in this comment, if I understand it correctly. And I'm sure others would appreciate it as well!

[petobens]

Yep this exactly the same thing I would like to see in the api :)

[alex-courtis]

Please see Recipe: Cycle Sort Methods

[va9iff]

doesn't it make sense to have something like api.set_sorter( string | function ) ? it's unnecessarily crumblesome to define a separate variable to keep track of the current sorting method and a separate function for just to return that variable, only to pass the string "modified_time" or "name" to nvim-tree which can be done like api.set_sorter("modified_time") or api.set_sorter("name") so, maybe consider simplifying it to that

[va9iff]

local sorter_string = "name"
local sorter_function = function(nodes) 
	return sorter_string 
end

local sort_by_time = function ()
	sorter_string = "modification_time"
	require('nvim-tree.api').tree.reload()
end

local sort_by_name = function ()
	sorter_string = "name"
	require('nvim-tree.api').tree.reload()
end

require("nvim-tree").setup({ 
	sort = { sorter = sorter_function } 
})

just passing a string should not require that much boilerplate imo