Looking for a simple sorting application

[EmilBoussard]

Hello everyone,

I'm looking for a very simple app for sorting my input. It would work like this:
I initially tell it that I have A, B, C, D, E, F, G and so on. I tell it the order I'd like these elements to be in. When I start the app, I get to choose which ones of these elements I'd like to work with today. Then the app would simply display all elements (in order) minus the ones I did not select. So if I chose E, G, B and D, it would display it like so:
B
D
E
G

In reality, I (as a trucker) would tell it which stops I have today. It would then tell me which order I should pack the wares in, in order to make my route as effective as possible. Does anybody know if this kind of application exists, or is anybody able to make it for me? I'd prefer if I could touch/drag things around instead of using the keyboard.

I'm very grateful for all answers.

 

[jae_63]

It's an interesting question. I doubt that there's an existing custom app for you out there. Here's one approach, but it's more complicated than I would like:

• build a small database using an SQLite application such as aSQLiteManager. This database would contain two tables. The first one would seldom be changed, and would contain two fields. The primary key might be the name of the stop/town, and the secondary key would be a short string, such that the dataset is inherently sorted. So going northward from my home (Bethesda, MD), the records might look like (Bethesda,AA),(Rockville,BA),(Gaithersburg,CA),(Germantown,DA),(Clarksburg,EA),(Frederick,FA). Note that these are sorted by location, rather than alphabetically. By using a two-character code it makes it easier to insert additional destinations later on, e.g. (Derwood, BN) could be placed between Rockville and Gaithersburg
• On a given day, you'd enter the few destinations for that day (e.g., Clarksburg, Rockville, Germantown), and by running a simple SQL query it would present the destinations to you in the proper order. I don't know whether there's a tool out there which would make it easy to selected these destinations in a drag-and-drop fashion

This seems too cumbersome to be usable.


Rather than a native Android design, what about a simple web site which you could use every morning from your phone? This wouldn't be very difficult to implement in Javascript, and would be more generic if you switched (say) to an iPhone at some later date.


[ No database is required for this one; the destination "database" would be hard-coded into a Javascript array on the web page ]



Hope this helps, and hopefully others will have more practical recommendations ...

 

[jae_63]

What about a grocery shopping app which supports aisle numbers? Then the towns can be your items, with one town per aisle, judiciously sorted by location. Leave 9 blank aisle numbers between adjacent towns, to allow room for future insertions.


For example MightyGrocery.

Let me know if this is unclear. I might find time to provide a complete example.

 

[jonbanjo]

As with a previous poster, I'd say possibly a database App. There seems to be stand alone ones as well as remote ones that can talk to say MySQL.

It does take a bit of a bit of learning but if you could get into SQL, you could ask a lot of questions from a database. OK it's the cumbersome way (rahter than have an app do it all for you) but the basic knowledge of relational databases and queries are things I personally feel many could find useful.

 

[jae_63]

I decided to flesh out the MightyGrocery example. Any grocery app which supports aisle numbers will do the the trick. The idea is that we'll use the aisle numbers to impose an ordering of destinations, and this sort-order is not the same as just alphabetically sorting the names of the destinations.

So for my example I tried (not completely successfully) to delete MightyGroceries' own aisles (Bakery, Produce, etc.) and I added six new aisles named 010,020,030,040,050 and 060. Then I placed one of my six towns in each aisle, for example placing Germantown in aisle 040.

I also deleted all of the default groceries (eggs, milk, etc.) and marked my six towns as "favorites". So now I can add towns to today's "pantry" list (really your trucking destination list) either by point-and-clicking on Favorites, or by typing the first few letters of a town. Furthermore this list can be either sorted alphabetically (via "Sort and Filter", which is available via the down-facing arrow in the upper-right corner next to the lightning bolt), or by aisle number, i.e. in the logical order of visiting destinations.

Note that for purposes of loading a truck, you might want to reverse the sort-order of destinations, so in my example Frederick would be in aisle 010 and Bethesda in aisle 060.

I'm attaching several screen captures. Hopefully this should all be quite clear now; let me know if not.

I know it may seem strange to use a grocery shopping app in this way, but we're just taking advantage of its aisle-sorting capabilities.

 

[EmilBoussard]

The MightyGrocery app solution seems viable. I'll give it a shot at the station tomorrow. Thank you for your answers.