Laravel 5.1 - Order by two columns not working as intended

Question

I have two columns, quarter_number and quarter_year. The quarter_number column stores a value between 1 and 4, while quarter_year stores a year value. I want the data to be sorted like so for example:

ex: (quarter_number - quarter_year)
4 - 2015
3 - 2015
2 - 2015
1 - 2015
4 - 2014
3 - 2014
etc...

Thus it seemed like this statement would work:

$last_figures = QuarterData::where('company_id', '=', $company->id) ->orderBy('quarter_number')->orderBy('quarter_year')->get();

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to work as intended (which I thought would be similar to a radix sort). It ends up just sorting by the year (or whatever to last orderBy statement is). Do I have to just program my own custom radix sort for this? Or is there a better way?

Thank you.

Solution

I think you have to use the quarter_year first, like this:

$last_figures = QuarterData::where('company_id', '=', $company->id)
       ->orderBy('quarter_year')->orderBy('quarter_number')->get();

Comments

[jrgilman]

That seems to have been it. I wonder why this works and the other doesn't.

[dino]

I think what you actually want is - $last_figures = QuarterData::where('company_id', '=', $company->id) ->orderBy('quarter_year', 'desc')->orderBy('quarter_number', 'desc)->get(); which will order your data in reverse i.e. 2015,2014,2013,etc.

[dino]

Also you need to order by quarter_year first so that you get the grouping that you require, i.e. order by the year first and then by the quarter to get the quarter numbers grouped by year.

[jrgilman]

I want it to order from oldest to newest, but yes that would work too. My original post makes it look like I want it DESC though.