Re: Funny date-sorting task

On 5/12/07, Frank Bax <fbax(at)sympatico(dot)ca> wrote:
> At 07:40 PM 5/12/07, Andreas wrote:
> >I've got a stack of tasks to show in a list.
> >Every task has a timestamp X that may be NULL or a date. It contains the
> >date when this tasks should be done.
> >Sometimes it has date and the time-part, too.
> >
> >
> >The list should be like this:
> >1) X sometime today should come first in ascending time order.
> >2) X in the past should show up after (1) in descending order so that
> >not so long back dates come first
> >3) X = NULL
> >4) X sometime in the future
> >
> >Could you provide a clever solution?
>
>
> ORDER BY CASE WHEN X=today THEN 1 ELSE
> CASE WHEN X<today THEN 2 ELSE
> CASE WHEN X IS NULL THEN 3 ELSE
> CASE WHEN X>today THEN 4 ELSE 5 END END END END

Less verbose:

ORDER BY CASE
WHEN x = today THEN 1
WHEN x < today THEN 2
WHEN x IS NULL THEN 3
WHEN x > today THEN 4
ELSE 5
END