Explicit column ordering

[seancolsen]

@kgodey said

I think it would be ideal for the API to return the column's index as a property and the frontend should order by that. Please make an issue for that; until then, it's fine to order by id.

I'm starting a new discussion here to respond.

[seancolsen]

@kgodey Can you help me see the value in passing a separate property in the API response? Unless/until we can use the API to re-order columns, it seems to me that the position of the columns in the response array sufficiently communicates their order.

[kgodey]

When I said "for implementation", I meant for backend implementation.

Ah okay, I misunderstood. In that case, the backend should use a column's index, not id (the backend has this information). It does not need to expose the index to the frontend.

id might work in many or most cases, but it's not guaranteed to work because it's assigned by Django for the purposes of the API. index is a PostgreSQL database property and is guaranteed.

[seancolsen]

the backend should use a column's index

Cool, can you clarify that in #1185 then?

[kgodey]

Done, I updated the issue description.

[mathemancer]

Sorry I was slow on this:

• Columns don't really have a defined "order" in PostgreSQL, and thus
• Index is not a property of a PostgreSQL table (at least not directly). However,
• attnum is a property of a PostgreSQL table. Moreover,
• when displaying a table most clients will order the columns by attnum.
• For weird reasons, ordering columns by their IDs will always be in the same order as by their attnums, but this is for reasons specific to our current implementation, and I wouldn't want to use IDs in the long run.

I suggest we order by attnums and remove indices from things entirely.

[kgodey]

Okay, sounds good.