custom sort cascading dropdown

[bluethroatyoga]

Does anyone have any great ideas on how to get a cascading dropdown to sort on something other than its value? Here is the problem:

I have a view of Courses that my cascading dropdown looks up to. It shows the following Course abbreviations in a listbox:

SMR 06/10

SMR 07/09

SMR 07/12

I want the dropdown to sort on Start Date (which is present in the view) rather than Course abbreviations. It must, however, search on Course abbreviations, so in the widget, Display and Value must be set to Course abbreviation. Any ideas?

Thanks!

[casyana]

If you need to use the same field for value and for display for your cascading dropdown, then you can use the following approach. Create a virtual field and use cascading dropdown form element for it, use Courses as display and Start Date as value, and select - sort by value option. Use hidden form element for your real course field. And you have to create a JS function, that will update this fields value with selected virtual dropdown option. This function should be called on form submit.

Hope this helps.