complex-ish sort on items in a dictionary

Memo Akten

Hi all, I have a dict which has the (simplified) hierarchy shown at the bottom of this post.
I have a number of groups, each of which contain a number of items, each of which have the same fields. It's like a mega simple database.
The data is very small (less than 5 groups, less than 5 items per group) but very dynamic (nearly all fields updating 30fps, occasionally new items added or removed).

What i'd like to do is:
* find the items which have a specific field set to 1 (e.g. data4 == 1)
* sort those items according to a specific field (e.g. data3[0])
* iterate this sorted subset of items in order to do other things.

I have no idea where to begin!

I have a really ghetto idea which is:
* iterate the dict and check each item if its data4 == 1
* if it is, concatenate the value I'd like to sort on (e.g. data3[0]) with the full path of the item, and add to an array (i.e. this array would be [5.2_group1::item2 3.45_group2::item1 7.3454_group2::item3]
* sort the array with zl.sort
* split each item in the array using '_' as a divider and lose the first part
* I now have an array which is the full path of each item, sorted [group2::item1 group1::item2 group2::item3]

I haven't implemented this yet, because it feels so horrible. Is there a better way?

I can't put this in a matrix because the data is all different lengths and types, and even contains strings and other stuff.

I was thinking perhaps I should go sqllite, but I'm worried about performance. I'm filling pretty much nearly all of the fields of this dict every frame at 30fps. Would that work with sqllite?

//sample data structure:
group1:
___item1 :
______data1: [value value]
______data2: [value value value]
______data3: value
______data4: 0
___item2 :
______data1: [value value]
______data2: [value value value]
______data3: value
______data4: 1
group2:
___item1 :
______data1: [value value]
______data2: [value value value]
______data3: value
______data4: 1
___item2 :
______data1: [value value]
______data2: [value value value]
______data3: value
______data4: 0
___item3 :
______data1: [value value]
______data2: [value value value]
______data3: value
______data4: 1

// this is what I'd like to add to the dict:
sorted : [group2::item1 group1::item2 group2::item3]

cheers

Memo Akten

If anyone comes across this post looking for a similar solution (sorting sub-dictionaries of a dictionary by a field), I ended up doing it all in javascript. was relatively straightforward (but i flattened the hierarchy, i.e. I don't have items inside groups anymore, instead the group name is prefixed to the item name. group1_item1, group2_item3 etc. I actually did this for other reasons, but it helped the javascript too).

(EDIT: < code > tag doesn't work, using < pre >)

/*
Input: 
    dictionary.

Output:
    array of keys sorted by 'x position' field, only if 'active' field is set

*/
inlets=1;
setinletassist(0, "dictionary");

outlets=1;
setoutletassist(0, "sorted array of keys");

var thisname = "user_dict_sort.js" 
var vrsn = 3;
var verbose = false;

thisname += " v" + vrsn + " ";

post(thisname + " init"); post();

//--------------------------------------------------
function sort_by_pos(a, b) {
  if (a.pos < b.pos) return -1;
  if (a.pos > b.pos) return 1;
  return 0;
}

//--------------------------------------------------
function setverbose(b) {
    this.verbose = b;
    post(thisname + "verbose: " + b);
}

//--------------------------------------------------
function dictionary(dict_name) {
    if(verbose) { post(thisname + "dictionary"); post(); }

    var dict = new Dict(dict_name);      // get master dictionary
    var keys = dict.getkeys();            // get keys
    var arr_to_sort = new Array();        // array of mini-dicts to be sorted
    var arr_out = new Array();            // output array containing only keys sorted by pos
    
    // iterate keys
    for(var i=0; i 0;
        if(is_active) {
            var pos = sub_dict.get("pos")[0];
            arr_to_sort.push({ "key": key, "pos": pos });
        }
//        post(key, pos); post();
    }

    // sort
    arr_to_sort.sort(sort_by_pos);
    
    // extract only keys and add to new array for output
    for(var i=0; i jsobject conversion see
https://cycling74.com/wiki/index.php?title=Parsing_Dict_files_to_Javascript_objects
*/