Beets API sorting

Help
1

Hello.

The API Documentation mentions an optional sort argument, which I assumed was used for specifying how the results should be sorted. However when I tried to used a standard beets sort string I ran into the following:

# offending code
lib.items(query='album_id:1', sort='track+')

# error
File "/home/callum/code/git-repos/beets/beets/library.py", line 1422, in items
  return self._fetch(Item, query, sort or self.get_default_item_sort())
File "/home/callum/code/git-repos/beets/beets/library.py", line 1396, in _fetch
  return super(Library, self)._fetch(
File "/home/callum/code/git-repos/beets/beets/dbcore/db.py", line 1028, in _fetch
  order_by = sort.order_clause()
AttributeError: 'str' object has no attribute 'order_clause'

The funny thing is that including the sort string in the query like lib.items(query='album_id:1 track+') works perfectly, which made me think that there might be a different, special purpose for the sort argument.

Is that the case or am I doing something wrong?

2

Yo! That parameter actually wants to be a Query object from dbcore:

So for that, you’ll want FieldSort('track').

The funky thing about that function (lib.items) is that the query parameter may be either a string, which gets parsed into both the query and sort parts, or it can be just a Query object, in which case you need to specify the sort separately.

3

Right! Thanks for clarifying

4

Just noting for future reference that what’s required is FixedFieldSort('track') rather than just FieldSort('track') as the latter is an abstract class.