How to use underscore.js sortBy

Question

I'm trying to rearrange a multidimensional array from a json file in my underscore template so that I can print out the disease from highest # of cases to lowest # of cases

The problem comes from the sortBy function not actually sorting the arrays.

here is an example Array that I'm working with

The totalCases array looks like: [163, 134, 98, 118, 2, 167, 152, 102, 49, 4, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1265]

And the sortBy function is:

 <% _.sortBy(totalCases , function (num) { %>
    <%= num %>
 <% }); %>

it returns 163, 134, 98, 118, 2, 167, 152, 102, 49, 4, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1265

I don't know what is going wrong with how I'm using the sortBy

Answer 1

You are mixing view with controller somehow. You don't want to rearrange the array in the underscore template, but before presenting it. Reread the docs for sortBy, it takes a callback for the sort criteria or a property name or so, you don't want to output anything in there.

<%  var sortedCases = _.sortBy(totalCases, function(case) {
        return // your sort criteria here, e.g. `case.occurences`
    });
%><ol><%
    _.each(sortedCases, function(case) { %>
        <li><%= case /* … */ %></li>
<%  } %></ol>