Sort field set in Visualforce renderAs PDF with apex:repeat

Question

Can anyone help me to sort a field set that I'm iterating through with apex:repeat? I have a Visualforce page that renders some data as a PDF using Field Sets and I just want the ability to sort the Opportunities block by Close Date desc. (I also have a Task set that I aim to sort by Activity Date desc, but I imagine that will have the same answer as this, only posting one block for simplicity.)

My code snippet right now (standardController = "Account"):

<table id="Opportunities">
  <tr>
    <apex:repeat value="{!$ObjectType.Opportunity.FieldSets.Opp_Set}" var="f">
        <th class="tableHeader">{!$ObjectType.Opportunity.fields[f].Label}</th>
    </apex:repeat>
  </tr>
  <apex:repeat value="{!account.Opportunities}" var="opportunity">
    <tr>
      <apex:repeat value="{!$ObjectType.Opportunity.FieldSets.Opp_Set}" var="f">
        <td><apex:outputField value="{!opportunity[f]}"/></td>
      </apex:repeat>
    </tr>
  </apex:repeat>
</table>

FWIW: I'm self-taught admin who dabbles in development - I feel like I could probably figure this out with more time, but I'm under the wire and feeling the crunch of not being sure how to adapt this.

Looks like I can either go with some Javascript ala Sort Order of Child Records Using a Standard Controller, though I don't really understand how to adapt this to work with Field Sets (Field Sets were totally new to me with this project, so I might be making them out to be more impactful than they really are), or an extension or custom controller, which I just....really didn't want to have to do for this project and am honestly not quite sure how to do either.

Yes, I've already upvoted https://success.salesforce.com/ideaView?id=08730000000Brl4AAC though I encourage others to as well.

Thank you all in advance!

Answer 1

JavaScript is probably not going to avail you here:

• Don’t use standard components that aren’t easily formatted for print, or form elements such as inputs or buttons, or any component that requires JavaScript to be formatted.
• PDF rendering doesn’t support JavaScript-rendered content.

Although I cannot say I've tried it in this context.

You can achieve this with a fairly simple controller extension, although the fact that you're using field sets does complicate the Apex slightly because one must pull the fields and construct a dynamic SOQL query rather than relying upon the Visualforce page's standard controller to handle the dependencies.

Something like the skeleton below should do the trick, but I'm a little leery of steering you down this road without some Apex knowledge. You'll need to try this out, possibly adapt it to your org, wire this up to your page with an extensions= attribute, and you must add a test class to be able to deploy it to production. If you don't have time to work on your development, you may not want to start down this road - or you may need to work with a developer.

(Please also note that I haven't testing this actual code in my dev org. I hope it's a useful starting point).

public with sharing class ContactSortingExtension {
    private ApexPages.StandardController controller;

    public ContactSortingExtension(ApexPages.StandardController c) {
        controller = c;
    }

    public List<Opportunity> getOpportunities() {
        Id accountId;
        List<String> fields = new List<String>();
        String baseQuery = 'SELECT {0} FROM Opportunity WHERE AccountId = \'\'{1}\'\' ORDER BY CloseDate DESC';

        accountId = (Account)controller.getRecord().Id;

        for (Schema.FieldSetMember f : Schema.SObjectType.Opportunity.fieldSets.Opp_Set.getFields()) {
            fields.add(f.getFieldPath());
        }

        return Database.query(
            String.format(baseQuery, 
                          new List<String>{ String.join(fields, ', '), 
                                            accountId }
                         )
        );
    }
}