Nested structures not sorted correctly

Question

I am looping over a query, building an array of structures

<cffunction name="QueryConvert" returntype="any" output="false">
    <cfargument name="q" type="query" required="yes">
    <cfargument name="page" type="numeric" required="no" default="1">
    <cfargument name="rows" type="numeric" required="no" default="500">
    <cfset var result = structnew()>
    <cfset var rowStruct = structnew()>
    <cfset var col = "">
    <cfset result["page"] = arguments.page>
    <cfset result["total"] = ceiling(arguments.q.TotalrecordCount/arguments.rows)>
    <cfset result["records"] = arguments.q.TotalrecordCount>
    <cfset result["rows"] = arraynew(1)>
    <cfset queryDeleteColumn(arguments.q,'TotalrecordCount')>
    <cfset queryDeleteColumn(arguments.q,'rowNum')>
    <cfset columnLabels = QueryColumnArray(arguments.q)>
    <cfset rowStruct = [:]><!--- Tada an ordered struct --->
    <cfloop array="#columnLabels#" item="col">
         <cfset rowStruct[col] = q["#col#"]>
    </cfloop>
    <cfdump var="#result#" abort>
    <cfreturn result />
</cffunction>

but when I view the nested structures, the order of the keys is all mixed up. I expected them to match the order of the column names in the database table.

Answer 1

The short answer is you need to use a ordered struct. The long version looks like this:

First we need to look at some sample data

 <cfscript>
 q = queryNew("id,name,category","Integer,Varchar,Varchar", 
     [{id=1, name="One", category="Cat"},{id=2, name="Two", category="Dog"}]
 );


 writedump(q);
 </cfscript>

Let's look at out sample data. Note that the columns are not as expected.

Now let's get our columnLabels ready to go. Note that we are creating an array.

 </cfscript>
 result.rows = [];

 columnLabels = q.getMeta().getColumnLabels();
 writedump(columnLabels);
 </cfscript>

<cfloop query="q">
   <cfset rowStruct = [:]><!--- Tada an ordered struct --->
   <cfloop array="#columnLabels#" item="col">
       <cfset rowStruct[col] = q["#col#"]>
   </cfloop>

   <cfset arrayappend(result.rows, rowStruct)>
</cfloop>

<cfdump var="#result.rows#">

Tada

Furthermore

This is all easier to read with cfscript

<cfscript>
for (row in q)  {
    rowStruct = [:];
    for (col in columnLabels)    {
        rowStruct[col] = q["#col#"];
    }
    result.rows.append(rowStruct);
}
</cfscript>

For a live version see: CFFiddle.com